


Like You've Been Here Before

by SNAKEHABITATTURNAROUND



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: ADVENTURES IN THE PELOPONNESE, Big Bang Challenge, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Mild Angst, OT5, zayn's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 12:13:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3446759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SNAKEHABITATTURNAROUND/pseuds/SNAKEHABITATTURNAROUND
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s 2022 and even though the band’s been done a good few years there are, you know, one or two things that never got much closure. Zayn, though happily married with kids, still deals with some of the shittier aspects of having been in the public eye. The others are… the others.</p><p>When Niall and Harry convince them all to take off to the Greek coast and see out a ten year old promise to write the True and Accurate memoir of their time together, Zayn suspects there may be other motives at play - viz., the discussion and restoration of Harry’s relationship with Louis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like You've Been Here Before

**Author's Note:**

> Right. WEll. Right. Okay.
> 
> I am both very sad and very relieved to let this thing go. It's been a year but BY GOD I GOT HERE IN THE END.
> 
> Thank you thank you to all who ensured this was so. Morgan - [morgannalegay](http://morgannalegay.tumblr.com) \- is responsible for all the beauteous art you see here. AJ [adamjoy](http://adamjoy.tumblr.com) who sparked the initial idea; Laura [herstrionics](http://herstrionics.tumblr.com) and Nora, who obliged when I screamed HERE TAKE THIS I DON'T WANT TO LOOK AT IT ANYMORE and shoved a draft into their hands. AnYONE WHO HAS EVER LISTENED TO ME. THE JUDGES FOR PICKING ME. The Big Bang challenge for motivating me. I love you, Houston.
> 
> I am quite proud and happy with the way things turned out, and I hope you are too.

When his phone flashes at 3:46 AM Zayn is technically awake to register it. But he’s just put the baby down again which means he isn’t for all intents and purposes legally conscious and as soon as he crawls back in next to Perrie sleep overtakes him and the message in his inbox becomes a thing of dreams.

***

He’s eating his breakfast too few hours later – Farah is finally sleeping again – when Perrie, Kashira balanced on her hip, mobile wedged under her ear, hands him his own ringing phone. He’s busy watching his wife make silly faces at their eldest daughter while she mmhmms into a call with her publicist so he doesn’t pick up straight away, and when he does he regrets answering at all.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THIS WORLD TODAY?” screams Louis Tomlinson, a shard of princess-cut diamond in his poor cotton wool ears.

“I dunno, bro,” he sighs, bracing himself. “But whatever’s happening, can it happen a little quieter? Farah was a nightmare last night, I’ve barely slept.”

“IT’S NI – it’s Niall Horan,” says Louis, correcting himself to a more tolerable volume.

Zayn spoons another mouthful of cereal. “I think he’s been here a while, actually.”

“I know this is a pointless question given your history of shoddy communication and current domestic bliss, but do you think every now and again you might want to look at your phone?”

“Why would I when I’ve got you to tell me what the fuck is going on in this world today?”

Perrie covers Kashira’s ears a fraction of a second too late, glaring in mock outrage.

“Right, well, do you remember how we once pledged that exactly ten years from one stupid late night bus session we would finally start working on a tell-all memoir that was in fact a real tell-all and not some sappy vetted shit, and it would blow everyone’s minds and finally clear the air about everything that’s ever happened to One Direction?”

“Er… no,” says Zayn.

“Me either. But you know who does?”

Ah. “Niall Horan,” says Zayn, rolling his eyes heavenward. Niall has the most absurd mind for facts and figures that Zayn’s ever encountered, especially when it comes to sentimental milestones, and Niall thought everything the band ever did was a sentimental milestone. He still makes sure to mark the weirdest anniversaries. Sometimes Zayn gets emails from Niall to remind him that it’s been seven years since their last human pyramid stage attempt, or eleven years since the first LA trip where they all went shopping together and came home with sixteen pairs of trainers between them. He knows for a fact that Niall and Harry have a Google doc to keep track of their awards and achievements that stretches back not just to their first Brits but also to the time Louis drank a very expensive bottle of Chivas Regal by himself in half an hour. Zayn can barely remember the date he got his first ink, but at least he knows the usual things like birthdays.

Louis always joked that they should use Niall’s powers of retention for something important, like a Vegas poker tournament, but the closest thing they ever came to that was a high stakes game of Snap that Louis had (suspiciously) ended up winning. Zayn remembers that. He remembers the scuffle that followed after Harry realised Louis was laying claim to his brand new Grateful Dead ring, and then Paul coming in to pull them all apart, Louis being sent to the quiet bus, Liam sitting down with the pack of cards trying to figure out how the jokers had gotten back into the deck – although, unlike Niall, he couldn’t say which time zone this had taken place in.

“Niall Horan,” confirms Louis. “Look at your texts. Call me back.”

Louis’ voice disappears. Zayn opens his inbox.

There are a few missed call notifications from about an hour ago, but there, still basically at the top, a group message from Niall:

_The time has come!! 10 yrs ! Get ur pens at t ready, the world must hear our Moments all the guts and glory ! We meet to start work Friday 7 pm sharp LDN that pub near old flats see u soon if you’ve forgotten what this is ur a traitor to the name Direction!!!!!_

Zayn hits Louis’ number. “Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.” says Louis.

“I mean we’ll go, right? And we can talk to him there.”

“We can’t do it,” says Louis flatly.

“I’m not going to tell him that now, Lou. You know how he gets. Anyway, it’d have to be a really long message.”

“Anything more than two words is too long for you.”

“Yeah, well,” says Zayn. Perrie’s off the phone now and spreading peanut butter on toast for Kashira. She raises an eyebrow at him. “I gotta go, mate. I’ll see you on Friday.”

“What about Harry? How come he gets out of being in London –”

Zayn cuts him off before he can go down that road, otherwise they’ll be here for hours. Ordinarily he’d be patient and listen to his friend’s litany of perceived slights but he’s too out of it this morning and they need to get going. “Thanks for letting me know, Lou. Love you.”

“GIVE THE GIRLS BIG KISSES FROM ME,” yells Louis quickly.

“I will,” says Zayn, smiling. He hangs up.

“What was that racket about?” asks Perrie, cutting up a banana now because some monkey taught their daughter that peanut butter toast should never be without it. Kashira comes running over and holds out her arms. He picks her up and kisses her cheek.

“Niall wants us to write a book.”

She wrinkles her nose. “You’ve already written books. There’s millions of them.”

“Books,” snuffles Kashira into his ear.

“I mean, yeah, but we didn’t really write those. We just spoke to some writers for a few hours at a time and then they’d do it all up. And they’re not exactly accurate.”

“Nothing that’s ever been written has ever been accurate,” she says, her eyes dark. She brings the toast over to the table and sits down next to him.

And even now, years away from their last tour, he can’t escape that fact. Louis might make fun of it, but domestic bliss isn’t easy and it never has been. Things are not great at the Malik-Edwards house right now.

Last week they had to fire their newest nanny because Zayn had come up from his studio to find her crouched over his laptop. She’d been going through his photos. He doesn’t feel famous anymore – the screams don’t follow him around like they used to, he could go to the supermarket – if he chose to – which he wouldn’t – without a mob accumulating, but he knows there’s a residual haze that will be with him the rest of his life, that people pay to see pictures of anything, and the nanny knew that too. She’d looked up with such a strange expression. He can’t get it out of his head. There isn’t anything incriminating on there, it’s a library of reference pictures with a few personal shots scattered throughout, so it’s nothing for any tabloid to get excited about, but she’d returned his gaze so unflinchingly it was intimidating, like she had some kind of right to access any corner of his life she liked.

“I think you’d better go,” he’d told her, and she’d straightened herself up and looked him in the eye and said, “I could tell them anything, you know,” and even though he knew there was nothing to tell he could feel the old panic skittering across his system as he said slowly, “But you won’t,” also knowing that this was maybe not true. He didn’t know who she was as a person, not really. It had felt, and still feels, really unsettling to realise that after all this time he’s still susceptible to this level of paranoia. So now they’re without nanny, and Perrie’s about to start rehearsal for her first solo tour and she’s so worried about it and Zayn’s expecting some story to pop up in the Mirror about their sex life any day, or a harassment suit, and he’s spoken to his lawyer a hundred times and he knows he’ll be fine, it’s just hard. And he’s tired. And Niall wants to write a book.

But what his wife is referring to right this minute when she talks about accuracy or the lack thereof is their long and storied history, breakups and reunions and girl bands and boy bands, “cheating” and “separation” and the time they spent apart because of it.

“Maybe, though,” he says, then stops. No. It’s way too simplistic a thought. And anyway he doesn’t want to.

“Babe, full sentences.”

“I thought for a second that maybe it’d be good to get our perspective out. On everything. But. Like.” He hands Kashira a piece of her toast, watching her take a dainty bite like a little Disney princess. “I don’t know if it’s worth opening that stuff back up now. And a lot of it isn’t really my story to tell.”

“What do the others think?”

He smiles at her. He loves her so, so much, for a hundred reasons, but partly also because she knows what it is to be entangled in something permanently, the weird hive mind he will always belong to. Even when he’s not with them he’s with them, and he knows it’s the same for her. No one else understands it.

“I don’t know. We’re meant to talk about it on Friday.”

“So go talk about it on Friday, dozy, and you’ll go from there,” she says, pulling his now soggy bowl of cereal over to her, just as a wail peals out from upstairs.

*** 

He walks into the pub from their early apartment days and hones in – it always happens like this, sniper-fast, old reflexes – on the back of Niall’s head. He’s in a corner talking to Liam, who’s watching the door, and as soon as Zayn comes in Liam cracks his biggest puppy dog smile and comes pelting over to envelop him in a hug. Zayn feels immediately that it’s been too long.

“Hello hello hello,” says Liam, and it’s like a warm bath. Here’s his best friend. It’ll never change.

“Hi,” says Zayn, resting for just the briefest moment before pulling away. He can sense Niall hovering right next to him for his turn.

“Bout time!” Niall yells, pounding him on the back. “Where have you been hiding at!”

“Funny, Nialler,” says Liam. As Niall steps back Zayn notices the laptop open on the table. So that solves the Harry problem.

Zayn goes to pick up a round at the bar and when he gets back there’s a Skype call dialing. Suddenly a beautiful sunny vista fills the screen: a lot of pool, lush greenery, and the distant line of the sea. An enormous beaming face pops into the frame. “Hiiiiiii!” says Harry, a tanned slice of California in their chilly London pub.

“Morning!” says Niall happily, waving. 

“G’d evening,” says Liam, just as Zayn says hello.

“Where’s Louis?” Harry frowns and looks around as though he could somehow see further than the computer’s static gaze.

“Aren’t we good enough for you, Harry?” says Liam.

“He’ll be here soon, it’s Tommo, you know,” says Niall, unconcerned.

On cue, the pub door bursts open with a thud. Perennial X Factor mentor Louis Tomlinson stands there in his beanie and hoodie not looking anywhere near his thirty-one years, which he would be thrilled and relieved to hear. Without mucking about he heads straight for their table. He slaps Niall over the head, musses Liam’s hair, and goes in to do the same to Zayn before he stops himself, then slides into the seat between Zayn and Liam. “I hope none of you were being rude about my affliction,” he announces to the group in general but mostly to the screen.

“What affliction?” says Harry.

Zayn rolls his eyes. “He means his inability to be on time.”

“It’s only quarter past,” says Niall.

“You were the one who said ‘sharp’,” says Liam.

“Look, lads, I got here when I could, let’s not squabble.”

“You came here to squabble,” says Harry bemusedly.

“I didn’t!" 

Harry smirks, making a point proven gesture that pixellates at an inopportune time.

“Everyone doing all right?” asks Liam. “Zayn, how are the girls?”

“It’s so weird that Zayn has kids,” says Niall.

“Thanks, Niall,” says Zayn. “Yeah, they’re good, thanks. I’ve got some photos.”

He opens a picture on his phone of Kashira holding Farah on her lap very attentively like one of her dolls and passes it around, to everyone’s delight. “Show me, show me,” says Harry, waving desperately from LA. Zayn holds the phone up to the screen. “My rugrats,” Harry purrs, squinting. “Is that the dress I sent –”

“That’s enough shop talk, we’ve all seen the Whatsapps,” says Niall. “We need to get down to business.”

“Jesus, Niall,” Louis says. “We’ve been here two minutes, calm down.”

“Yeah, but I know I’ve got about ten minutes before everyone wants to catch up, me included, and this is a serious Take Me Home issue that we can’t ignore.”

“DO YOU REMEMBER SUMMER ’09, WANNA GO BACK THERE EVERY NIGHT,” belts Harry.

“Shut _up_ , Haz, no need to wave a huge fucking flag about,” says Louis, shrinking into his hoodie. Even Zayn looks around in alarm. But no one seems to have heard, or if they have they don’t care too much, and Niall’s smiling like that was the best response he could’ve gotten.

“We’re not the only ones in the world who could sing that song,” says Liam diplomatically. “Quite a few other people know the words.”

“Yeah, Rock Me, one of our greatest hits.”

“Well if it’s so unpopular then how would anyone know it’s us?” asks Harry.

“Guys.” says Zayn. “Listen to Niall.”

“Thanks!” Niall winks at him. Zayn winks back. 

“Here’s my idea: let fans in on our history the way we want it to be told,” Niall says, as though he’s rehearsed this. He clearly anticipated a fight. “We all know how well the old books worked when it came to making us look like dickheads.”

“‘I’ve got a lot I want to achieve, so drinking doesn’t interest me,’” quotes Louis for the hundredth time in many years. He once tried to convince Funky Buddha to paint it above their bar, but they politely declined. Everyone groans.

“I was seventeen!” wails Liam.

“Eighteen,” says Niall.

“I wonder if Niall missed his calling as a historian or possibly a librarian,” Harry muses.

“How would Great Britain’s most beloved morning radio host get all that time off, anyway?” asks Louis. “Assuming _I_ could fit things into my very busy schedule, which, as you know, is generally more crowded than everyone else’s.”

“You’re in between seasons, Louis,” says Liam, amused. “You call me every day to come write with you.”

Niall shrugs. “I have plenty of leave accumulated. Haven’t been away in a year, and I don’t really need to give much advance notice. I can just get Marv and a few other surprise guests in to cover for me, should be easy. 

“The thing is, Nialler, we kind of don’t owe anyone anything,” says Zayn. “It’s all done now.”

“No, I’m not saying we do. I just wanted to point out that there’s a market for it,” Niall says, taking a hefty swig of his beer. “Nostalgia trade, ‘cause enough time has passed. We get calls all the time from people asking when there’s gonna be a One Direction reunion, they come in at least two a day. And that girl from the bin in Sweden, her name’s Annalise, did you see she just did an interview with Hello? ‘The Fan One Direction Never Forgot’, some bullshit like that.”

As a matter of fact, Zayn did catch the article, because Perrie brought it home the other day to laugh about. In light of all the nanny stuff he hadn’t found it as amusing.

Niall continues. “But we could even just do it for ourselves as a personal record. Something you could pass on to the girls so they get the full story. We wouldn’t necessarily have to publish it.”

“I think that sounds wonderful,” says Harry, leaping on the idea so fast Zayn suspects he and Niall have been talking about this for a while. “And I think we should do the Before Midnight thing and go to the Peloponnese to write it.”

“What the hell is Before Midnight?” Louis tilts back in his chair.

“We watched those movies so many times! Ethan Hawke! Julie Delpy! You _liked_ the first one!”

Louis squints. “Aw yeah, is that the one where they're running around Paris and he has to stay with her hippie parents –" 

“No, that’s Two Days In Paris, which is also Julie Delpy, but –” 

“That’s not a bad idea. If we could all pull it off it would be good to get away to do it in one go,” says Niall.

“Who says we’re doing it,” says Louis, looking at Zayn. Zayn closes his eyes.

He’s tired. He’s so bloody tired. And he doesn’t know if it makes sense to make everything public, especially when he’s felt so rattled lately with the nanny stuff looming large and the girls – and he hasn’t gotten any work done because of it, he just sits in his studio reading and playing games for “inspiration”, can’t seem to sketch anything, hasn’t talked to anyone at Marvel in weeks, but on the other hand, the same creeping sensation from before – maybe – maybe he does want to set the story straight, before anyone else can try again to box him into something he’s not. Then there’s the even stronger force of it – the part of him that’s programmed to seek these boys out when he’s unsure of himself, to be with the people who can mirror back to him what he is at his best, slip into this role, be quiet with them, be loud with them, never explain, it’s so easy, it’d be a relief, get away, just for a bit –

“Oh god, look at the cogs whirring,” moans Louis.

“More than I can say for you, Tommo,” says Liam. “Lads, I miss everybody and I think it’d be fun to relive the old days. We’ve definitely got some good tales up our sleeves and there’s always room for new ones.” Zayn finds himself nodding his vote with Liam’s, realising he definitely agrees, somehow. He would do it. He wants to be there.

“It _is_ a huge step,” says Harry, even slower than usual, “to bring it all to light, I’m not saying it isn’t, all the gory bits, all the – all the teenage stuff.” He ducks his head, and Zayn is slightly thunderstruck by the lightness of the euphemism. “But I was never comfortable hiding it. I always thought it was so dishonest, I wanted to – I mean if we have an opportunity to talk about it now, when it isn’t so problematic for our brand, I think it could help, and I want to –”

Just then a pair of trousers enters the frame – Harry must be lying down somewhere low, probably a deck chair – and the trousers say that Este’s on the phone, and Harry gets distracted, starts talking about sound quality and deadlines and using a different studio, so Zayn looks quickly over at Louis, who has a particular set to his expression that Zayn knows means he’s fighting against himself, trying to find the clearest route to the answer he wants. They won’t do it if Louis doesn’t want to do it. They can’t. 

The trousers leave and Harry turns back to them. “I think I just always assumed this would happen eventually, which is what made it feel okay to cover it up at the time.”

“We never…” Louis sighs. “You have a lot less to lose, Haz. I don’t want everyone to know everything. I don’t think they should.”

“Who said anything about everything?” says Niall, making Liam blink.

“You did,” says Zayn, though now that he thinks about it he can’t remember when, exactly.

“That’s the point about controlling it ourselves. We decide. No meetings. No manager-speak. We write it, it comes out how we want, then we figure out what we want to do with it.”

This is a very clever tack to take with Louis, who can’t help himself when it comes to the word “control”. The four of them hold their breath.

“Well, the thing is,” says Louis, feigned-seriousness overcoming him, “if you’re all determined to run off and do this, I can’t leave you to it unchaperoned. It’d be dangerous.” He makes a big show of shrugging in defeat. It’s Louis’ bravado routine. “Also, I know Zayn thinks he’s brainy, but let’s face it, my flair for narrative is supreme. So it seems like I don’t have a choice.”

The truth couldn’t be further from that, and Zayn notices he hasn’t said a word about Harry, but Niall grabs Louis’ face and kisses him on the cheek, yelling, “Knew you’d come round, Tommo!” and Harry says “Thank you, Lou,” and Zayn catches his eye and sends him a silent message of support – they won’t go anywhere they don’t want to go – and Liam returns Louis’ earlier favour by rumpling his hair, and with that out of the way they descend into gossip and one-upmanship just as Niall had predicted, and when they leave the pub an hour later after Harry excuses himself for a lunch meeting Zayn feels like he’s been taken apart and put back together again a little lighter, a little stronger, and he sings the whole car ride home.

***

“You’re doing _what_ ,” says Perrie softly, tearing her eyes away from sleeping Farah to stare, disbelieving, at Zayn. He’d come in to the nursery to talk to her as soon as he got back.

Now that he’s said it out loud to someone outside of the band it does seem a little mad. “Er. We’re going to Greece. For a week or so. To write a book,” he repeats.

“Are you now,” says Perrie, her hand on her chin. “Are you writing a book about your life, Mr So-Private-He-Won’t-Tell-The-Doctor-What-He-Ate-For-Breakfast. And when are you doing this?”

“We were thinking of leaving on Monday,” says Zayn sheepishly. “And this is different.”

“Is it,” she says, same dangerous tone.                               

“It’s a record. So we can have the last say. And we might not even put it out,” he says, reclaiming some confidence, “and you didn’t seem so against it when I mentioned it the other morning.” 

“That was before you told me you were going to jet off with your mates to do it! We’re barely managing as it is, Zayn, and my schedule’s only getting more ridiculous!”

“Yeah, but I thought about it, and I have a plan,” he says. Somehow her opposition to it – although completely understandable – makes him want to do it even more, which must be an after-effect of an evening with Louis.

“I’m not postponing the tour, Zayn, don’t even think about saying that to me again, I’ll give you a crack round the head so fast –” 

“My mum will come stay,” he says, and she stops dead in surprise.

“Oh,” she says. “That could work.”

***

So that’s how Zayn finds himself on a jet to Kalamata with Liam. Niall and Harry are already in the tiny town they’re staying at, and Louis has a press obligation he can’t miss this morning but is soon to follow.

“Are you nervous?” asks Liam, putting the safety guide back in its pocket. No matter how many planes he’s been on Liam will always read the card during takeoff; it’s a habit everyone else ridicules that Zayn secretly appreciates. At least someone will know what to do if they go down. 

“I’m okay now that we’re in the air,” says Zayn. He pulls his headphones out the monogrammed leather duffel Perrie gave him for Christmas. 

“I meant about the book.”

Zayn scratches the back of his head. “Not really. I don’t think I’m nervous for myself, anyway, that’s not the word I’d use.”

“He wouldn’t come if he didn’t want to,” says Liam, performing mild telepathy.

“That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, Li. I’m – apprehensive. That’s it.”

“I think I’m actually looking forward to the challenge. Life’s been so boring lately. To be fair, it might have been a mistake to leave London.” Liam moved out to a village in Derbyshire literally called Lullaby or something almost a year ago to follow a woman he’d been seeing for a few months who was for certain this time – this time, unlike all the other times! – the woman for the rest of his life. She’d broken it off barely three weeks after he’d set up shop on a small hobby farm but somehow Liam still hasn’t moved back. Zayn thinks he not so secretly loves learning the ins and outs of livestock care.

“I know what you mean,” says Zayn, even though for him it’s more the opposite. He hasn’t told the others about the nanny yet. He doesn’t know why, exactly. Maybe telling them would make it more real? This way he can pretend it’s an incident that’s barely made a dent in his world. If he tells them it becomes a much bigger deal than it is, and it’s not that traumatic, nothing’s happened, so why should they know? He already knows how they’ll all react. Liam will want to go through the whole thing trying to understand Justine’s agenda, see if there wasn’t some kind of misunderstanding. Harry will get quiet and start calling people. Louis will want to take her down as swiftly as possible, making sure she can’t work or touch him again. Niall will listen and squirm and swear and repeat whatever Louis says. So that’s done already.

He doesn’t know why all of a sudden he needs a thousand excuses, but just then the hostess comes to take their drinks order and anything else he might say to Liam on the subject fades away.

***

They touch down. There’s a driver waiting to take them from the airport to the house, and Zayn doesn’t know if Harry’s given this man instructions but he’s mercifully silent, which is great, because Zayn never feels chatty after a flight. He texts Perrie to let her know they’ve arrived and she replies to wish him luck barely seconds after he’s hit send. Zayn slumps back, reassured that everyone’s okay. The afternoon sun is piercing gold in that late winter way and the glare keeps making him close his eyes, which in turn makes him more tired, so he dozes off for a bit on Liam’s shoulder as they cruise past the beautiful scrubby Greek countryside.

***

He wakes up to Liam gently patting his knee. “Are we here already?” he yawns. With the girls any bit of sleep feels like a stolen victory, and he’s lost the ability to tell how much time has passed. Could be five minutes. Could be an hour.

“Yep. Eyes open all the way, mate, up you get.”

They pile out the car as the driver starts unloading their luggage, and Zayn’s standing in the driveway of a long, low villa built out of exposed creamy stone that somehow manages to look both rustic and modern, though undeniably Mediterranean. Cypress and olive trees guard the approach, and Zayn can hear the faint sound of the sea, which would be promising if he’d ever bothered to go to more than one of the swimming lessons Louis continues to buy him year in year out for his birthday as a part of a very annoying, very long-running joke. 

Before he’s had chance to so much as stretch his legs Niall and Harry come barreling out the front door, yodeling and screaming, a pair of warriors on the attack. Zayn can’t even react as Harry pins him against the car in a rib-crushing embrace, showering him in kisses as though Zayn is a French-speaking Morticia Addams and Harry is Gomez. “Hi hi hi hello hi heyyyyy,” mutters indie pop’s most sought-after producer into Zayn’s neck, and Zayn can’t help but grin.

“Hello Legs,” says Zayn, drawing back to get a good look at his friend. He hasn’t seen Harry in the flesh in almost a year. “How are you?”

“All right now, vasapnin with you! Can’t believe I get to touch your perfect face after so long–”

Niall throws them all into a group hug. “Vasapnin, vasapnin!” he echoes Harry happily. “How are ya, how was the flight? It’s brilliant here! Wait till you see!”

“I think it should be okay,” says Harry, a little more anxiously. “It’s a bit further east –”

“Than the movie,” chime in Liam and Zayn. Zayn has only a very vague recollection of Before Midnight from the many tour bus screenings Harry put them through, and he doesn’t remember the setting so much as a lot of arguing. He hopes that’s not an omen.

“We know, Harry. Relax,” says Liam. “It looks amazing.”

“Four down, one to go,” says Niall, grabbing Zayn’s smallest suitcase and wheeling it up the steps. “Tommo gets in around nine. Come on, come on, let’s give you the grand tour!”

Zayn exchanges a glance with Liam and the two of them follow their guides into the house. 

***

“Wow,” says Zayn, standing in the entrance. Next to him Liam whistles. The lobby, which has wings to either side of it, is a platform that drops down into a wall of glass, showcasing a panoramic view of a crescent-shaped bay. There’s not a building in sight, just a few rocky islands dotting the sea. As they descend the steps on the other side they become level with a lounge area; beyond that, a deck and an infinity pool past glass doors. Niall dramatically slides them open and they go outside. There’s a covered patio with a dining area and beautiful wooden chairs and another set of stairs that looks like it leads down to the beach.

“Kitchen’s over here!” yells Harry from somewhere inside, like Zayn would know what to do with that information. He emerges from a different set of doors behind the patio. “But we have a chef and a housekeeper, Theo and Christine, who get in tomorrow. Niall and I stopped off at a farm shop on the way in, though, and picked up a few things. Might get some more of the olive oil on the way home!”

Niall nods his assent. “You should try those – what were they called? The wrapped rice things?”

“Dolmades,” says Harry promptly, some kind of Michelin guidebook as always.

“Dolmades,” moans Niall. “But you can’t, ‘cause I ate ‘em all.” He grins. Liam pouts.

“Sounds great, Haz, excellent work,” says Zayn, knowing that all his friend wants is some kind of acknowledgement of his attention to detail.

Sure enough, Harry beams. “Don’t you want to see your rooms? I pre-assigned them – thought it’d be easier, they’re all about the same –”

“Lead the way,” says Liam, putting a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

 

 

“And this one has a big bathroom with lots of mirrors,” says Harry, opening the door to another bedroom. “So it’s yours, Za—”

Louis Tomlinson is propped up on one arm in the middle of the plush white linen bed, his jumper hanging rakishly off one shoulder. “I think you’ll find this is my room, actually,” he smirks.

Niall taps Harry’s jaw shut.

“What the fuck,” says Zayn.

“Thought I’d take the earlier flight, give you all a nice little surprise,” says Louis. “The front door was unlocked. Very good security work, team.” Everyone continues to stand in the doorway, staring. Zayn doesn’t know why. He saw Louis literally the other day. Harry hasn’t seen him in over a year, though, and his shock is contagious. “I must say, I expected a warmer welcome.”

It takes Harry about another second before he launches himself at the bed yelling “GET IN!”

Zayn, Liam and Niall bound over and all of a sudden there’s a tangle of limbs on the king-size. Louis starts bashing them with pillows that Harry keeps kicking away from his face and into Liam. Zayn pins Louis down in an attempt to derail the chaos, but Louis lurches up and kisses Zayn right on the lips, who pretends to faint coquettishly at his touch. “Oi, what about me!” protests Niall, and Louis grabs him by the side of his face, littering his mouth with sloppy licks.  “And me?” says Harry, which is drowned out by Liam’s “Do not try that out over here!” and Louis’ roar of “I’ll do whatever I bloody want!” as he gives Payno a wet smack on the nose.

“And _me_?” says Harry again, louder this time. He’s somehow ended up on his knees between Liam’s legs. Zayn suspends his (very gentle) tickle offensive on Niall.

“And you, Harold,” says Louis, who turns around to face their youngest. Harry’s now a fully-grown adult, of course, but he still looks so vulnerable, so trusting that Zayn’s heart stutters in the small pause that ensues. Louis, aware that all eyes are on him, makes a show of licking a finger and pressing it into one of Harry’s dimples. It’s a lowkey but still completely in character display of affection, and it does what it’s meant to do. The crease in Harry’s forehead disappears.

“All right,” says Niall. “When’s dinner?”

***

Zayn takes Louis’ assigned room next door, because Harry was right, they’re very similar, and he doesn’t mind. He’s done hanging the few contents of his suitcase in the wardrobe and is just setting out his toiletries on the dresser when Niall comes racing down the hall yelling that dinner’s ready. 

They eat in front of the coffee table in the living room, Harry and Niall sitting on the floor and the rest arrayed around the couches. There’s bread and dips and a huge moussaka Harry also bought at the shop and they’ve cracked open a few beers, though it’s a casual night tonight since they’re all travel weary.

“Not even a day to get here and everyone’s dog tired! This used to be fucking child’s play,” complains Louis, stifling a yawn.

“We’re all men now,” says Harry solemnly. “Can’t get by on adrenaline anymore.”

“Tell you what,” starts Liam, who is immediately met with “No, Liam!”and yet another barrage of cushions from Louis. “No, tell you what, to keep us awake, let’s go round the table and say what we’re most excited for this week.”

They all groan.

“I’m excited to see what kind of diamond-encrusted, platinum-plated gold spoon Payno pulls out of a velvet box to eat his breakfast with tomorrow,” volunteers Niall.

“Actually, you won’t be seeing that, because I’m officially over that one,” says Liam. “I went to a hypnotherapist for a few sessions and now I’m cured.”

“What?” says Niall.

“You never told me that,” says Zayn, frowning. He can’t believe his best friend left him out the loop upon being cured of his major phobia.

“How did he do it? Did he wave a spoon in front of your face and say you were getting veeeery hungry?” asks Harry.

Louis’ already bounded over to the kitchen and from the sounds of things is opening every drawer he can reach, rummaging around for the silverware. Ten seconds later he’s back, brandishing a soup spoon in front of him like a sword. “Prove it,” he orders, holding it out. “Eat that last bit of eggplant with this.” 

“All right,” says Liam, and furrowing his brows in grave concentration he takes the spoon from Louis’ hand. He breathes in and out once, twice. It looks like he’s counting in his head.

“Jesus bloody Christ,” says Niall as Liam moves the plate onto his lap.

He lowers the spoon. Loads it up. Brings it back to his lips. And puts it into his mouth. 

“Everything I know about the world is wrong,” wails Harry.

Zayn’s just trying to quash the very weird, very insistent sense of betrayal he feels building in his gut. He wants to pat Liam on the back but he feels like that’s not really required of him here.

“Well done, mate,” he says instead. Liam looks equal parts like he’s swallowed a swarm of bees and pleased with himself.

“I am so, so proud of you,” says Louis, deadpan. “I’ll go get rid of that pile of plastic spoons from under your pillow right now.”

“Don’t talk about pillows,” moans Harry.

“It must be bedtime,” says Liam, pushing himself off his elbows with a sigh. “Spoons or no spoons. I’m Paul tonight and I say we turn in.”

“How is Paul? Has anyone spoken to him lately?” asks Louis, who stacks a few plates halfheartedly before slumping back down. Harry picks up where he left off, ferrying things back to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” says Niall, “I saw him the other day, Siobhan just got over a bad case of chicken pox, but he was still going on about that succulent garden of his –”

“Can’t believe he retired from looking after us to go grow cactuses,” grumbles Louis.

“Same thing, both a pain in the arse,” says Zayn. “I’m really not looking forward to chicken pox.” He stumbles up onto his feet, yawning.

“Bed!” says Liam again, putting his arm around Louis.

“Bed,” the rest of them chorus, and troop off down the hall. It feels very good. It feels very normal.

 

*** 

Zayn comes to with a jolt as his door creaks open. It’s dark in his room. Not long ago he would have slept through such a slight noise with ease, but he’s become extra sensitive to sounds that might indicate an unhappy child, and now he’s awake. He snatches his phone from the nightstand – it’s seven forty-five, semi-reasonable – and pulls the heavy covers over his head, trying to ignore what is definitely four sets of footfall, and – despite himself, he cracks a smile – the gentle strumming of some guitar chords.

With a soft _whump_ several bodies land around and on top of him.

“It’s time to get up in the morning!” sings Niall.

“Morning!” echoes Liam.

“We’ve got souvlaki breakfast for you,” rasps traitorous Harry.

“We went nowhere to get it, so get the fuck up and eat it, you stupid fucking lazy sexy dad!” Louis rips the duvet right off the bed, and Zayn curls in on himself, moaning.

“IT’S TIME TO GET UP!” they all shriek, a troupe of monkeys bouncing on his bed. So this is how Kash feels when she gets Perrie to spring around on the trampoline. “IT’S TIME TO GET UP! IT’S! TIME! TO! GET UPPPPPP!”

“I’m taking a picture of everyone from a _very_ unflattering angle,” he grumbles, pointing his phone from below.

“TIIIIME TO GET UP!” yells Harry, sinking into the bed to lie beside Zayn and stare imploringly at him.

“I will if you do,” says Zayn, smiling as he swipes out and topples Louis, Niall and Liam. Louis and Niall manage to leap off the bed somehow, but Liam dramatically falls overboard and lands on an errant pillow, letting out a muffled “ow”.

“Souvlakiiiii,” drones Harry like a Toy Story alien.

***

“Where should we do this, then?” asks Zayn, once the breakfast things have been cleared. Rude awakening aside, he’d slept the night through like an absolute log for the first time in what feels like years and the sensation of being fully rested sits oddly with him. He’s Facetimed Perrie and the girls and he’s ready to go. “Over here? Whose computer are we using?”

“What’s the rush?” says Louis. “All work and no play, etc.”

“We haven’t done any work yet, Tommo,” says Niall. “Yeah,” Liam adds, “you’ve been on this very nicely padded bum for hours.” He taps their friend on his amply endowed rear.

Louis sighs, slapping Liam’s hand away. “All right, all right, let’s boot something up and get going, no time to waste, we’ve only got a week, chop chop, what are you all doing cocking about?”

Harry bolts out the room and comes back with a notebook and a pen as though he had it stashed under a cushion at the ready.

“We’re not going to use that, surely,” says Louis, frowning.

“No,” says Harry, in a tone that indicates it is distinctly possible he had thought they might. “But I wanted to have it on hand just in case. And I brought some old ones too. For records.”

“Lads, lads,” says Niall, patting them both on knee. “Wait here a second.”

He returns to the table with an enormous laptop so paper-thin it looks like it’s been flattened by an Acme anvil. “Prototype,” he says happily. “Ten of these in the world right now.” Zayn lets out a low whistle.

“Friends in high places, Niall?” asks Liam, his eyebrows somewhere in his hairline. Which is a bit of a given, thinks Zayn, because from Niall’s perspective the world is divided into two categories: friends, and people-who-aren’t-yet-friends. And Leeds supporters.

“Know a guy who knows a guy,” grins Niall, and gets on with the deed Zayn thinks they might all be minor league dreading by opening Word. 

A blank document and its blinking cursor sit in front of them. The five of them stare at it in silence for a few moments as the realisation that they’re in slightly over their heads dawns across them collectively. 

Harry leans forward. “Can we open with that time I walked in on Zayn going down on Perrie?”

“No,” says Zayn.

“How did that one happen, again?” Niall asks, his fingers poised over the keyboard as though he’s actually going to write it. There is no way he’s going to write it. 

“What do you mean, how did it happen?” snorts Louis. “Since when has there ever been any kind of privacy here? I can’t believe it didn’t happen more often.”

“It did, with that other girl that one time, except she was giving Zayn –”

“ALL RIGHT, you’ve already almost told that charming anecdote to Piers Morgan in front of everyone on YouTube,” says Zayn loudly. 

“Should this book be called ‘Sorry, We Were Actually All Quite Loose’?” wonders Liam.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” says Harry serenely. A strange expression flits across Louis’ face for a second, then vanishes.

“And I don’t think that’s going to come as a huge shock to most people,” says Zayn. “It’s not like, this just in: uni-age boys living band life on tour have sex.” Liam chuckles. Harry and Niall cackle.

“Anyway, with Perrie,” says Harry, apparently unwilling to let go, “I heard that really sexy Janelle Monae song coming from Zayn’s room –” 

“Are you listening to what you’re saying, Harold? A _really sexy_ song was playing in a room that was _closed_ to you while your mate’s girlfriend was visiting –”

“It’s a really good song, I was excited! It’s got Miguel!

“I don’t know it,” says Niall.

“Then he came in, I nearly bit my tongue off, Perrie screamed and rolled off the bed, the end. We’re not putting that in,” finishes Zayn. “Why don’t we just start from the beginning?” 

“It’s a very good place to start,” agrees Liam. Harry paws at his hair, corners of his mouth twitching, obviously dying to break out into his do-re-mes but restraining himself admirably. Liam gives him an apologetic smile.

“That’s boring,” complains Louis. “No one wants to hear that bit again. Haz had the right idea – you have to captivate your audience from the first sentence. We should begin with a juicy bit, right in the middle of Wembley or something.” 

“In media res,” offers Zayn.

“No, not with them, we don't want to let Dan Wooton’s head swell any bigger than it already has,” says Louis.

“No, Lou, it means –”

But whether Harry has the right idea about the term Zayn’s learned from his time on the books at Marvel remains unknown, because Niall starts to type, reading aloud for their benefit.

“If you want to talk about fate,” says Niall, fingers racing across the keyboard, “you should talk about us. Because One Direction might have been formed on the seventh series of The X Factor, but we were born looking for each other before reality television ever intervened.”

“That’s epic,” Zayn and Louis murmur in unison. “Keep going,” says Harry.

“We were five young boys who found a home in each other and for that we were grateful.” (A small snorting noise from Harry.) “We couldn’t have known it then, but –”

“Aren’t you going to talk about our football match?” asks Liam.

“And my concert with Harry, and Zayn and me going for that job?” 

“Would you hold on a second? I’m getting there,” scowls Niall. “More than I can say for the rest of you.”

Which is how the rest of the morning passes, in a comfortable sniping (“Niall, you know, I’ve always meant to tell you – that’s not how you spell ‘def—’” “Shut up, he’s concentrating!”) as they – mostly Niall – chip away at history. Having started from the _very_ top with childhood insecurities and the myriad ways they might have crossed paths to save each other earlier on, which personally Zayn thinks might be a bit much, it takes them through sunset to get to the bungalow.

“Well, here we go,” mutters Zayn as he passes Liam in the kitchen. They’re taking a five-minute break.

“Do you know, I think Niall’s done this on purpose,” says Liam, grabbing a yoghurt out the fridge. “Trying to ease us in slowly. Almost so Louis doesn’t notice.” 

“I think it’ll be hard not to notice when Harry asks to include that sonnet he wrote from that first stay,” says Zayn darkly. “Do you remember?”

“How could I forget,” groans Liam, rubbing a palm into his forehead. “He did it while we were all in the pool, didn’t he? And we had no idea where he went, and it turned out he had been holed up in the shed the whole time, trying to compose – how’d it go –”

“‘Your eyes they are so blue where mine are green’, something about his smile – er, something about his bum…”

“‘Your smile more bright to me than any sun/And God’s own gift to man it is your bum/Peach curves aloft the waves of the pool’s sheen,’” supplies Niall, who comes in to take a can of Coke. “Funny, but we’re not gonna let him embarrass himself _that_ colossally. We’re going for honesty, not suicide.”

“What don’t you remember, Nialler?” asks Zayn, smiling. “Do you have any gaps in your memory? Do you sleep at all at night?”

“Nah, you know me, I never sleep, famous for it, ‘cause I don’t wanna miss a thiiiing,” sings Niall, strumming an air guitar. “Let’s go deal with the lovebirds.”

The lovebirds, as it turns out, do not need much dealing with. When they go back out Harry’s doing laps in the pool as Louis drifts by on a lilo, sipping delicately at the straw of his shandy.

“Wanted to see if he could break his old record,” Louis says by way of explanation.

“Who did,” mutters Liam. Harry pops his head out at one end and gives them a brief grin and a thumbs up before diving back under, his freakishly long Bambi legs churning in the water. 

Louis, with a face that radiates innocence, shrugs as if to say he can’t imagine why Harry would have chosen this exact juncture in time to start some harebrained undertaking so completely unrelated to the task at hand. Zayn narrows his eyes at him.

“Gotcha,” says Niall, taking this small defeat gracefully and coming to sit with his feet in the pool. Zayn and Liam follow suit. “Is he breaking it?” 

“Breaking what?” asks Louis.

Zayn buries his head in Liam’s shoulder.

***

Lunch is calamari with salad and warm bread and a big block of feta drizzled with honey that Liam is attacking, much to Niall’s disgust, when he turns to Harry and asks out of nowhere if Harry is going to talk about the album Taylor wrote about him. Excellent. So they’re going to get right into it, then, first day, Taylor Swift, no problem.

Harry swallows abruptly. “She didn’t write an album about me. I mean, some of it rang a few bells, but for the most part it wasn’t about the two of us.”

“Just because she throws in a few ‘green eyes’ this and ‘green eyes’ that doesn’t make it Harry, I’ve always said that,” scoffs Louis.

Harry’s face has flushed two shades redder. “Um, those bits are usually me, I think. Just the others bits aren’t… her.”

Niall lunges for the bread and starts sawing at it determinedly. Zayn feels, once again, as though he might be missing a few crucial pieces of information.

“What do you mean,” says Louis.

“I just meant, that, a lot of the artists I work with, you know, when – you know how it is, when you’re in the studio and you’re writing something, sometimes when you’re writing you might, like, think of a thing, and you’ll feel it really strongly, but it’s not something that happened to you personally, maybe, but maybe the inspiration comes from a story you’ve heard from someone else that like… sticks with you.”

“Harry,” says Liam. “Did you tell Taylor about you and Louis?”

There’s a pause.

“Yeah, but,” Harry licks his lips. “Louis knows I did, I told him at the time.”

“Oh, Louis knew, did he?” says Louis, his voice pitched higher. “That’s interesting. Louis doesn’t remember that. Louis also doesn’t remember anyone telling him several years ago that an album had just come out with tracks on it about his love life. Louis must have a terrible memory. Stupid Louis.”

Niall emerges from behind the bread. “Actually, Tommo, I tried to tell you, but you refused to listen.”

“How explicitly did you phrase it?” asks Louis sweetly. “Did you say –” here he affects a drawling Cheshire accent – “Um, er, I think, like, I think, sometimes, somebody, somewhere, sings, and it’s like, sometimes, about you, Louis, sometimes, like, um.”

“That’s quite a good Harry,” mutters Zayn. Harry elbows him.

“No,” says Niall. “I said ‘you should take a look at Taylor’s new album, you might see more of yourself in it than you think.’”

Liam chokes on a wedge of tomato. Zayn slaps him across the back a few times, sending out a brief prayer that they all make it away from this table alive. They all sit there in silence while Louis processes.

“What does that – what does that even _mean_ ,” says Louis eventually. The cloud of fury has passed. Now he just seems bewildered.

“I don’t know for sure,” says Harry, who still hasn’t resumed eating. “I just always had a hunch. Niall and I used to talk about it,” he admits.

“Have you ever asked her?” asks Zayn.

“I didn’t want to bring it up again in case – um, I didn’t want to bring it up again.”

“Maybe one of these days you could text her about it, shoot off a quick email,” says Louis, breezy as anything. Liam exchanges a glance with Zayn. “Just so you could get some kind of confirmation for me, has the world been listening to my own private pains for several years without my knowledge, that sort of thing.” 

“Yeah, I can do that,” says Harry. He looks queasy, and Zayn feels a pang of sympathy for him. They seemed to be off to such an okay start.   

“Okay, good,” says Louis, popping an olive in his mouth, suspiciously sunny again. “What are you all looking at me like that for? We’re all good, all fine, eat your octopus. Got work to be getting on with.” 

“Pass the butter, then,” says Niall. Louis obliges and everyone resumes more – 

“You should really use olive oil, that’s the whole Mediterranean diet thing,” Harry murmurs. 

– or less in peace. For now. Somehow Zayn doesn’t think they’ve heard the last of it. 

***

They table working activity for the rest of the day. “We’ll just ease into it,” says Niall, all mention of Swiftly induced bad moods under wraps. “Could do with a nap anyway.” Zayn agrees. He feels emotionally exhausted already and he realises he’s been excited and nervous and bracing himself for total disaster all day, which is a lot more stuff than he usually takes on. And on top of that they’ve even gotten things done, so. It’s like they’re excavating a skeleton – they’ve identified where the bones are, but now they have to decide how they want to dig them out. At the moment none of them really have an answer to that.

He excuses himself and heads to his room, texting Perrie a photo of their word count – 3,104. She replies with a video: Kash clapping Teddy’s paws together while Farah squeals beside her, trying to grab a foot and do the same. Perrie’s giggling off camera throughout. It’s the last thing Zayn hears before he passes out cold, smiling.

***

He lurches out his room two hours later – it feels like twenty – and the house is dark. Niall’s door across from his is open, and Zayn pops his head in the frame. Niall is still sleeping, curled up neatly on one side of the bed. Zayn feels a rush of tenderness towards his friend, who really needs his rest, having spent the day keeping together a group of rowdy idiots and churning out the bulk of the work. His contemplation is interrupted by a cry of “Not like _that_ you dipshit, I said _Oasis_ grunge, not fucking mid-two thousands Foo Fighters!” from somewhere in the house and Zayn draws Niall’s door further closed to guard him from the ruckus.

In the living room Louis looks like he’s about to punch Liam over the set of beats playing from his laptop; it seems like his anger has made a strategic migration. For his part Liam seems to be taking the abuse good-naturedly. “Stop screaming, Tommo, I just whacked this together a minute ago. We can fix it.” 

Zayn pulls his jumper sleeves over his hands and sits down in the armchair closest to the now-lit fire. “Yeah, stop screaming, you know it makes me anxious when mummy and daddy fight. And put on some lights, would you?”

“Lord Malik descends from his castle in the sky to survey the scene before him,” says Louis, directing his critical eye at Zayn. “Swooping in, as he is wont to do, at the eleventh hour, when all work has already been completed. ‘The peasants may write me songs,’ he says, ‘and then I shall sing them, if they be worthy of my patronage. But I shall not write my own material, nay! I shall not, unless a famous producer of hip hop is present, for I am itching to acquit myself of this godforsaken band and once and for all prove, without any shadow of a doubt, that I am the coolest, and that none may touch me.” 

Zayn yawns, having heard it all a million times in a million different forms – rumours, satire, wheedling from Harry to come down and just try _one session_ in the studio, inquiries from the genuinely curious. “Rather leave it all in your hands, wouldn’t I? Fuck knows why.”

“That was a great impression of The Mirror, Tommo,” says Liam. “Have you ever considered getting into tabloids?” 

Louis snaps the laptop shut. “Do you know what I remembered that I really want to make sure makes it into this thing – when Niall started crying so hard during Spaces on that one Late Late Show performance and he couldn’t go anywhere ‘cause there wasn’t time for a second take and he was just standing there with his guitar, blubbering, and Cordo handed him a tissue from off stage and he blew his nose throughout the entire second chorus.”

“Louis Tomlinson!”

The disembodied head of Harry Styles pops up from between the sofa and one of the wingbacks and Zayn, Liam and Louis all leap clear out of their seats, swearing.

“How long have you been there for?” Louis yelps. 

“We are not going to make Niall relive that moment,” says Harry, his eyebrows knitted together in a scold. “The only reason that song made it onto the album in the first place was because we promised we’d never do it live. It should never have made it onto that set.”

“It got on Four because otherwise we were going to ditch Act My Age. It was an exchange,” says Liam. 

“And not really a fair one,” says Zayn under his breath.

“Niall has done more for this band than anyone else here, so I think you should just watch your mouths before I’m forced to glue them shut.” 

This is the instant Niall chooses to make his entrance, still half asleep from the looks of things and trailing a throw blanket behind him like a cape. “I’ve done what now?”

“Everything, apparently, Nialler.”

Niall cocoons himself on the wingback. “Ah, yep. Sounds about right. Stand down, Harry, there’s a good bloke.” 

“I was just _saying_ ,” Harry whinges. 

“It’s all right, we’re all good, we all love Niall!” says Liam. “Bite to eat, anyone?”

***

The next morning Zayn’s lounging on one of the larger daybeds in the shade when Harry finds him. The gangly mop very gracefully flops onto Zayn, one arm flung around Zayn’s torso. They’ve been here barely two days and it’s not even that warm but Harry’s already golden-brown in his swim trunks, although to be fair he did have a head start. Zayn’s just had a dip in the heated pool, which makes Harry’s body feel even warmer next to his. Harry looks over at Zayn’s tablet. “Reading the news! _Again_?” Harry asks in a sing-song Stephen Fry voice, his sunglasses fallen down on his nose. 

“Well, it changes every day, you see,” Zayn replies.

“LOSERS!” yells Louis from the patio table before carrying his empty plate inside.

“I have children,” mutters Zayn.

“Is Kash old enough for Harry Potter?” asks Harry, frowning. “Won’t it –” here a suggestive wiggling of the eyebrows – “ _scar_ her?” 

Zayn gives him a Look. 

Harry sighs and changes the subject. “What am I going to do about Louis?” he says, twisting onto his back like a very relaxed cat.

“I dunno. What would you like to do?”

“That,” says Harry primly, “is none of your business.”

“If only that were historically true,” says Zayn, meaning long ago he would have given a lot to take a bunk in a room, and sometimes a universe, that did not also contain Harry’s bunk. 

“I’m joking,” says Harry quickly. “It’s not like that. But we don’t have that long and he hasn’t said anything about how he wants to write our bit of stuff or if he wants to write it at all. It’s a big thing and we like… need to get going.” This is an understatement. No one’s broached the subject, though it’s the next task to tackle chronologically. Hence the stall.

Zayn watches the galumphing weirdo he considers his little brother and notes a worry in his expression that he knows isn’t just about the act of putting his relationship with Louis in writing for the first time. It’s that things were never resolved between the two of them and never could be no matter how much was said or which tactics were adopted or how hopeful they were that that this would be the last time. Even though he heard about it from both of them often, and in great detail, he still can’t imagine what it must have been like to conduct a pretty epic love affair under enforced secrecy. He can see the damage it’s done so plainly; you can’t really be expected to process something properly if you’ve had to spend so much of your energy pretending it didn’t exist, or at least refusing to acknowledge it. In other circumstances the two of them would have been able to ride off into the sunset together – at least for a while. But here in this reality there was a whirl of directives and commentary from outside, flurries of rumour and speculation and hatred and adoration, making everywhere dangerous for them until eventually they became dangerous to each other.

And they both have completely different fighting styles – when Louis isn’t avoiding something he’s charging at it head on, steamrolling everything that gets in his way, while Harry prefers to guide things towards him so gently his target doesn’t realise they’re being shepherded at all until it’s too late, and then they usually somehow don’t end up minding, because it’s Harry. So either they’re passively swimming along, assuming the other is on board, or yelling emotions in sterile hotel rooms at hours of the night that Zayn and Niall and Liam would rather they didn’t. It makes perfect sense that Harry pushed this autobiography thing and that Louis dug his heels in but eventually caved; they are, in their hearts, always ready to try again and again and again to understand.

Zayn looks at Harry now and sees all this resurfacing so he runs a hand through Harry’s hair the way he knows his friend likes it best. Harry’s eyes flutter shut.

“I think I know a way to make it happen,” says Zayn softly. “We just have to give it a nudge.”

 

 

“All right, lads. Time to get back to work,” announces Louis an hour later, suddenly head of the anti-procrastination committee. It’s a bit of an about face given that he’s the one who’s been barking at Niall every time he tries to open the laptop.

“I have a suggestion,” says Zayn. They’re all sitting around the pool in the sun.

“Speak, Malik,” intones Louis.

“I think we should split into two. There’s too much ground to cover, we’ll never get it done in the time we have left. But if we divide ourselves and each group has a set period of time they focus on we can do it twice as fast.”

“That’s the same way we write songs, so it’d probably work,” says Liam.

“And then what, we switch and add in whatever we think the other group’s left out?” asks Niall.

“All right. Zayn, come here, and you and I can write about 2014, and the rest can do all the other parts –”

“No,” says Zayn.

“You’re coming on very strong today, Zayn. I like it,” says Liam.

“What do you mean, no?” asks Louis, bristling like a small wiry animal on high alert.

“I mean no. You and Harry can work on X Factor through the Midnight Memories release. Me and Niall and Li will take it from there,” says Zayn. Niall keeps staring back and forth between Zayn and Louis as though they’re parents hashing out a tough divorce. Harry looks like he’s about to wee himself.

“That’s not fairly divvied up,” Louis says warningly. 

“But in other ways it is quite fair,” says Zayn.

“Haz,” says Lou, not taking his eyes off Zayn, “is this arrangement good with you?”

“I think – we need –”

“It’s a good idea,” says Niall, finally getting a grip, “but I think before we do it we should set some things straight, as a group, about the line we want to take.” He turns to Harry and Louis, addressing them directly. “With you two.”

Zayn could honestly cheer with pride at how good Niall is in this particular diplomatic role. It wasn’t always something that came naturally to him – normally that position fell to Zayn, who had experience mediating his sisters’ squabbles, while Liam and Niall looked on uncomfortably. But Niall grew up and into himself more evenly than any of the rest of them, so clear-headed, so decent, so enmeshed and at the same time removed from their ridiculous lives that this level of authority sits better on him than it ever did Zayn. It’s a quiet power, but they all trust him the most to stay impartial. More often than not Niall knows their best interests better than they do.

“Right,” says Louis. There’s a gleam of panic in his voice. Zayn moves to stand next to him so that their shoulders are lightly touching. “Right,” echoes Harry, his eyes meeting Louis’.

“I mean, I know I just said what I said, but at the end of the day it’s a story only you can tell,” says Niall. “It doesn’t belong to us.”

“It does, though,” says Harry. “A little. We’re a unit, and you were all there. It affected you. We all affected each other, that’s the theme, isn’t it?”

Louis straightens himself out, thinking. “Yeah, that’s true. So I don’t think we need to change tone or anything. It’s not like what we’ve got so far isn’t about our relationships. And in that sense I do – I want to be truthful,” he fidgets, picking at a loose thread of his shorts, “I just don’t want to give away too much – if, hypothetically, we ever release this. Like it’ll just be very straightforward. This is what happened, this is how it was, it did this to us as a band, it made us stronger, it made us weaker, it ended, we kept going, Harry and I are fine now.” 

“That’s right. We’re on the same page.” Harry gives them ten seconds to appreciate his pun, which they don’t. “It might be ambitious to give us four years. We’re not gonna finish anything this week, I think. But we can get started, can’t we, Lou?”

“Yeah, that we can, Harold. Let’s go be men.” With this Louis scoops up Niall’s laptop and stalks over to a deck chair in the shade, Harry trailing behind him.

“I’ll go get mine for us,” says Liam, going back inside. Zayn smiles at Niall, cautiously feeling as though they may have just overcome a small impossibility. Niall smiles back.

***

“I don’t want to talk about Sophia,” Liam is thundering. It turns out Louis isn’t the only one to veto certain subject matter. The breakup is an understandably sensitive topic. None of them thought he’d end up with anyone else, and Zayn knows Liam still thinks she’s going to reappear in his life and confess it’s been him all along.

Liam tips his snapback up to rub at his head and walks off, too riled up for further discussion.

“I’ll go get him in a minute,” Niall says to Zayn. “In the mean time, want anything from the fridge?”

“Nah, I’m good,” says Zayn. “I’ll be right back. I just want to go check on Harry and Louis.”

***

Outside, Harry and Louis seem to be in a similar rut. Zayn watches them from a concealed spot by the breakfast table and cringes as the sheer awkwardness of the scene plays out.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because we aren’t including it,” Harry’s saying.

“It does matter because you’re wrong! It was definitely backstage right before the semi-finals. I remember we were in those stupid grey outfits. Except Zayn. Somehow he managed the normal jacket. Tosser,” Louis grumbles.

Zayn smirks at this. He did often get preferential treatment in wardrobe even before they brought on Caroline, and he actually remembers that black and white letterman. They’d done that shitty Snow Patrol song. And Rihanna.

“Yeah, we definitely did then,” says Harry, “because you thought I had gotten too friendly with one of those backup dancers and you were jealous. But that wasn’t the first time. The first time we kissed was a few days before that and we were in our room at the house and everyone else was down at breakfast and I’d just come out the shower and I was still in my towel, and you pretended to be angry at me for taking too long, so I pinned you against the side of the bunk, and you said ‘You’re dripping on my foot, Harold,’ and I said ‘Are you calling me a drip?’ and you said ‘And if I am?’, and then I kissed you.” 

“I don’t remember that at _all_ ,” says Louis, shaking his head.

“Well… that’s… a little upsetting,” says Harry, who hasn’t broken eye contact with Louis this whole time. “You can ask Liam, I told him about it when it happened. He got really stressed that it was going to throw our performance and he asked me to try to please not act so rashly around you and concentrate on rehearsals.” He smiles crookedly. “For ‘the sake of the group’.” 

“Right, well, as you said, we’re not writing that anyway,” says Louis. He looks down, scratching at the deck chair with a little leaf he’s found.

“Yeah,” says Harry. “So I think we should start by admitting that some fans correctly guessed –” 

“Are you joking?” laughs Louis. “We can’t engage with that! This isn’t, like, an apology! I’m not going to say to everyone right off the bat ‘we did wrong, you were right’—”

Obviously not, thinks Zayn. Five seconds ago Louis dismissed the possibility that Harry might have the more truthful version of their first kiss. Although Louis could still be right about that. Harry’s story has a distinct air of fantasy about it. But both accounts sound real.

“I don’t think it’s something we can gloss over, Lou,” says Harry gently. “It was a very badly concealed secret.” 

“But I don’t think we need to talk about that aspect. We don’t need to – everyone already _knows_ the story of the story,” he insists. “If we’re going to do this I just want it to be very straight-forward, no commentary on the politics. I just want to tell them about the beginning of the band with us in the background.”

“Okay,” says Harry. “It’s just – like you said yesterday, we’ve written about that so often before I thought it might be interesting to give some detail on the new stuff. Just to acknowledge that like. We knew they knew. And it was hard.” 

“It was hard,’ agrees Louis, casting aside his leaf and looking up at Harry. “But if this fucking thing ever goes out, I don’t want anyone to think that – I don’t want to give people the satisfaction of feeling they won. It’s not about them,” he says bitterly. “It was never about them.”

“Louis. Those video diaries where I’m staring at you are still up on YouTube. They have, like, ten million views.” 

“Half of them are Niall, though. But fine. Let’s just tell that story,” says Louis. He draws Niall’s laptop closer to him. It looks like he might actually write something at any minute. “About how it started at X Factor ‘cause you couldn’t keep your eyes off me.” 

“And you couldn’t keep your fingers out my hair.” 

“The court will allow it,” says Louis imperiously. He starts typing something Zayn can’t see from here. Harry leans over to read it and bursts out with a howl of laughter.

“That’s so rude, just because we met in the toilet –”

Zayn decides now is a safe time to leave them, having witnessed more than enough. It seems like they’re more or less good to go, fundamental differences in approach aside. The rest of them can always add more in later.

He slinks back inside to update Niall on the situation, hoping that Liam’s cooled off by now. He doesn’t want to have to do star jumps or any of that stress-response shit with him. 

***

As a reward for getting over the first hump they finally get into the ouzo that night after a spectacularly good (though not as good as his mum’s) roast lamb dinner. Harry and Louis got out about two thousand words together, which feels huge, while after managing a few stiff sentences about Sophia Zayn and Niall and Liam had powered through all of On the Road Again, including the series of unfortunate photographs in Cape Town that were linked to the breaking off of Zayn and Perrie’s engagement. They hadn’t actually had much to do with it – as if Perrie would be so moved by pictures of Zayn loitering outside a tattoo parlour with his artist on a cigarette break that she would fall out of love with him. Anyway, Britney had taken his hand in hers to examine his ink, and not, as some papers suggested, “caress his ring finger seductively” (and wasn’t the act of caressing always seductive, grumbled Zayn to himself for the millionth time, how were these people paid to write anything at all).

It was just that at that point they hadn’t been in a house together in almost a year, and insecurity had gripped them both, because they were young, and famous, and presented with anything they wanted, and Zayn wanted Perrie to have what she wanted, and Perrie wanted some time alone, and the timing was terrible. Ultimately they discovered what they wanted was each other and everything fell into place, but it was a very rough six months. Rehashing this part of his life had roused his fears about Justine for the first time since the plane, and thinking of it again now for a moment he doubts his silence on the matter. Maybe he should tell the others about it, since they’ve been through the rest of the nosy profiteers with him and dealt with their own besides. But he tamps this down quickly; he isn’t going to think about that bullshit. Anyway, he and Perrie are older and stronger. It’s not worth the energy.

The brooding dissipates as the five of them sit around taking increasingly larger swigs of ouzo. They need to get looser around each other again, Zayn thinks. It’s not that it’s bad right now, they’re just still warming up, and not yet in crazy synchronization mode where no one can pick up a towel without bumping into someone else performing the exact same movement at the exact same time. “It’s been so long,” he accidentally says out loud, drunker than he realised, and is rewarded with Harry’s sing-songy echo of “It’s been so long!” from his perch on the kitchen counter where he is undoubtedly thumbing through his Instagram feed.

Louis pushes Zayn over onto the couch and then they all make their separate ways to bed.

*** 

Their third day starts off ominously. Harry emerges from bed in high spirits.

“Got a surprise for you all today,” he croaks, scrubbing his hair into a mess that’s inexplicably more pleasing to him. “A little excursion!”

Liam, who got in from _exercise_ of all things a few minutes ago, puts up a hand. “Can I just quickly tell you all before I forget, a weird thing happened on my run, I bumped into a girl –”

“Payno, that’s not weird for you, that’s just a regular night down the pub,” says Louis dismissively.

“No, I think she might have recognised me, but she didn’t speak any English, she just yelled and ran off, maybe I was blocking her way or something…” 

“Hang on, we’re not going to some farm to learn how to spin wool or anything like that, are we?” asks Niall, course correcting.

Zayn thinks about all the bizarre side trips Harry has made one or all of them take over the years. It’s been mixed bag. That giant palace made out of corn somewhere in the middle of America (“Under _corn_ -struction!” Harry cackled for days). A friend of a friend of a friend’s house while they were in Brisbane to watch a Green Bay Packers game (Zayn had thought they were just going to a party, but when they got there everyone was sat on the couch screaming at the TV, and someone told Louis to shut up when he tried to put on music, which did not go down well). The Japanese department store where you could buy beads to customize shoelaces and devices to make fancy napkin shapes on the same floor (that one was actually sick, Zayn bought Perrie a set of cat-shaped biscuit stamps). Anyway, he shares Niall’s skepticism.

“No, no, we’re just going to be tourists,” says Harry, which isn’t reassuring at all. “I will say this, though: where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

“What does that mean?” Liam looks 50% more anxious.

“It’s a quote, innit,” says Louis. Liam slaps his arm.

“Back to the Future,” adds Zayn. 

“Are we going hoverboarding?” asks Niall hopefully.

“I cannot say,” intones Harry. “But everyone has to meet out the front by 11.”

This sets them all off, because it’s already quarter past ten, so Zayn hightails to the bathroom he shares with Harry and Niall before either of them can get there and locks himself in until he feels presentable to the world.

The group assembles a few minutes late. Harry is pulling a jumper over his head when he comes out, sunglasses on and beaming. There’s a black Range Rover in the driveway. “Short ride first, come on, everybody in, in.”

“I was promised a lack of roads,” says Louis, looking back at Harry as he climbs in. Harry pushes him so that Louis tumbles head first onto Niall’s lap in the first row, squawking indignantly. Zayn hears Liam shout “settle!” from the front before he follows Harry in. 

They drive a way down the road before they come to a field, which would be empty, except for the helicopter plonked in the middle of it.

“Oh, no,” moans Zayn.

“Harry, don’t you remember Zayn hates helicopters?” asks Liam, brow furrowed. 

“I know, and I’m sorry, but I promise this one is _very_ safe and it’s only a half hour trip. Otherwise we’d be in the car for two hours there and back, and it’s really special and I wanted us all to… and I just thought… this seemed… argh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think,” Harry says, his face falling.

Zayn realises Harry’s responding to the crescendoing panic Zayn must be showing outwardly as well as in and he tries to force a smile or at least some kind of neutral expression. “Nah, nah, it’s okay, I can manage,” he says. “In the spirit of chill holidays and all. I can deal.” 

“Really?” asks Harry, brightening immediately. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? Because we can –”

“I’ll be fine,” he says firmly. “Let’s get this over with so we can see this amazing sight.”

“Please stop smiling or whatever it is you think you’re doing, Malik, you’re scaring the plants,” says Louis, who grasps his shoulder in encouragement. Niall slings an arm around him from the other side and they accompany him into the machine of death.

***

As it turns out, the ride is uneventful and none of them die. They touch down in half an hour, just as Harry had said. Well, twenty-eight minutes and eleven seconds. Not that Zayn was counting.

“Is it this way?” Harry asks their pilot.

“Yes, yes, through the trees,” says Stavros.

The five of them venture into the copse via a narrow and not very easily discernible trail. 

“This is all very cloak and dagger,” Niall remarks. “Are we going to some mystical initiation rite or something? I don’t think my mother would like that.”

“Maura’s got nothing to worry about!” says Harry jauntily, pushing through. “I promise this’ll be worth it.”

“Let’s not lie, Maura’s got some things to worry about,” says Louis. “Someone who once asked a camera grip how to use a compass is leading us further and further away from civilisation.” 

“Can’t you two just kiss and make up already,” mutters Zayn, who’s still wobbly from the helicopter and can’t be held accountable for anything that comes out his mouth.

“I think you’ll find we’re actually going _towards_ civilisation, and an important one at that. We’re just not entering the orthodox way, I’m creating suspense... aha!”

Suddenly they’re standing on an amphitheater stage, rows and rows of stone seats rising from their feet up into the trees. It looks very old, but somehow also very new. It takes the breath out of Zayn, to be honest. He wasn’t expecting anything like this.

Liam lets out a low whistle.

“Wow,” says Zayn, all thoughts of helicopters tabled for the moment.

“Ha haaaaa!” hoots Louis. “Not bad, Haz, not bad at all!” 

“It’s good, isn’t it,” says Harry, flushed with praise.

Not one to shy from any test of strength, real or perceived, Liam immediately starts bounding up the steps. He reaches the first tier effortlessly and pauses to look around, then continues upwards.

“Where _are_ we?” asks Zayn.

“We are at the theatre of Epidauros,” says Harry. “E-p-i-d-a-u-r—”

“It reminds me of the Verona arena,” says Niall. “We should play in here, do a one-off. The acoustics must be hectic.”

“I can hear you perfectly!” yells Liam from the last row. “It’s like you’re in my ear!”

“According to this,” says Harry, reading off his phone, “the acoustics are so good you can strike a match into a cupped hand and every single seat in the house will be able to hear it.” 

Zayn pats his trouser pockets down instinctively before remembering he stopped smoking a few years ago when Kashira was born.

Louis, meanwhile, has other ideas. “Liam, what am I saying to Zayn?” He leans over and stage whispers into Zayn’s ear: “Liam Payne is the biggest dickhead I have ever met, pass it on.”

Zayn’s far sight isn’t great, but he’s willing to stake his life that Liam is giving them the finger right now. Niall does a quick jig.

“It seats about fifteen thousand,” continues Harry, “built by Polykleitos the Younger, and it’s the best of its kind because it was buried until the nineteenth century, so it’s really well preserved.” 

“LOOKING DOWN ON THE CLOOOOOUDS!” sings Liam, jogging around the edge of the last tier. Niall plays some vigorous air guitar. Zayn meanders about, stomping down on the gravel and running a hand over the worn limestone seats, trying to imagine how many people have sat here over the course of time.

“But we aren’t done yet!” says Harry, tapping off to a map. “Follow me.” He heads for a different path than the one they came in on. Zayn watches Liam come flying back down to make sure he doesn’t fall and break his entire face.

***

They wander down the path and past a museum. Everywhere is empty – Zayn feels like they could be the last people left on earth, and the few blocks scattered here and there in the ground only reinforce this feeling. Not everything here has survived as well as the theatre.

“Did you hire the whole place out?” he asks Harry.

“Sort of. They’ve got irregular hours because they’re restoring bits and pieces so I just asked if we could come in one of the between times. The site manager’s sister is a huge fan, so…”

“So you sent her a pair of your pants and that was that,” finishes Louis with a smirk.

“Used or clean?” asks Niall.

Harry says something that sounds like “You wish”.

They pass a cluster of stones in a field that Harry tells them used to be a guesthouse, and then another cluster of stones Harry tells them used to be another smaller theatre, and then another – at this point Zayn is a bit fatigued of stones, and Louis has grumbled “well preserved” under his breath at least ten times, but this one has a big circular structure in it that Harry checks and double checks on his map before leading them over to.

“Here we are at the tholos of the Sanctuary of Asklepios!” he announces. “And in case that’s all Greek to you –”

Louis huffs at the obviousness of this set up –

“– this is a very old, very important place where people would come for healing, to find cures for things when no one else could help what ailed them.” 

“Did they use leeches,” asks Liam nervously, eyes darting around as though there still might be some here today. 

“I don’t think leeches came in till much later,” Zayn tells him. “A lot of older cultures had really advanced methods. Arabs were writing proper texts on medicine and surgery in like first century AD, no leeches involved.” 

“No, I think they _did_ actually use leeches in ancient Greece,” says Harry cheerfully. “But here they mostly used, um –” for the next word he lowers his voice to the most inarticulate muffle.

“What was that, Harry, come again?”

“They used. Er. They used snakes here.”

Niall kicks at Louis. “I told you that’s what he said.” 

“You _hate_ snakes, Haz,” says Liam, now scanning the terrain harder than ever.

“They’re not here anymore! This was two thousand years ago! And they were nonvenomous!”

Louis gives him a long look. “What are we here for, then?”

“People came here for all kinds of things. But one of the most common reasons for coming to Epidauros was purification – you would come here, wash yourself, pray, make a sacrifice –” 

“What kind of sacrifice,” whispers Niall to Louis. 

“— and then you’d sleep in the guesthouse and any dreams you had you had to tell the priest about, and they’d interpret that for you and make a prescription based on those images.”

“And what part of this ritual do you want to do now, Haz,” says Zayn, because that’s it, isn’t it, they’re here on another one of Harry’s Deeper Meaning quests, and they’re definitely not staying the night. 

“Can we just – first –” he motions for them to sit down on the stones closest to them and Zayn obliges. The others follow suit. The stones are warm from the sun, and Harry adjusts them so that they’re more or less in a circle.

“Are we allowed to be here actually on the ruins?” asks Liam, who is hovering in a squat a few inches from the ground. “How old are these things? It feels kind of… disrespectful.”

“It’s _fine_ ,” insists Harry. “I already got permission, I asked, you need to be _on_ here, Liam. Sit your glutes on down.” 

“Most of it was built in fourth century BCE,” says Niall. 

Everyone stares at him.

“I read it on the sign! It’s right there!”

Everyone continues to stare. 

“It’s not my fault I’m the only fucking person here who notices this shit,” mutters Niall.

“The disrespectful thing here is probably to practice whatever random spiritual thing we’re about to do on top of something that has, like, actual specific meaning and traditions?” Zayn says.

“What Zayn said,” says Louis, even though Zayn knows he couldn’t care less and is just trying to wriggle out of whatever Harry has planned for them.

“We’re not doing a random spiritual thing!” says Harry indignantly. He pulls out a bit of paper from his jean pocket. How he had room for anything in there Zayn will never know. “I did research, I wrote down a prayer from the Orphic hymns! They’re an ancient text they would probably have used here! I was hoping we could all read from it,” he says, looking around at them all and searching their faces in his very Harry way, like he wants them all to be the brilliant people he knows they are, if only they would rise to this, and despite his awareness of this mild form of manipulation it still works on him and Zayn is sorry for bringing it up. He tries not to think about how his dad would feel about this.

“What are we praying about?” asks Liam.

“Yeah, I thought we said no pagan stuff,” says Niall.

“It’s just a general call for good health,” snaps Harry. “What do you want from me? Am I meant to be culturally mindful or do you want me to talk like I’m selling you woobly crystals and incense?”

“Woobly crystals and incense, please,” says Louis, barely keeping a straight face.

“I think this is a really nice idea, Harry, I want us all to be healthy, too,” Liam says, reaching for the rumpled note. “I’ll start us off, shall I?”

Harry nods sullenly. Zayn puts a hand on Harry’s knee and on the other side he sees Niall do the same. Louis’ grin slips into something more serious in an instant.

Liam begins. “‘Great As – Asklepios? Skilled to heal mankind, all-ruling pay – pay-ee –’ um… maybe I shouldn’t have gone first...”

Louis leans over. “‘Paian’,” he says. “Go on.”

“Um, ‘all-ruling paian, and physician kind –’” Liam hands the scrap to Louis.

“‘Whose arts medicinal can alone assuage diseases dire and stop their dreadful rage. Strong, lenient god, regard my suppliant prayer.’”

Niall takes the page. “‘Bring gentle health, adorned with lovely hair; convey the means of mitigating pain, and raging deadly pestilence restrain.’”

Harry reads as slowly as ever. “‘O power all-flourishing, abundant, bright, Apollon’s honoured offspring, God of light, husband of Hygeia –’” he hands off to Zayn.

“‘The constant foe of dread disease, the minister of woe: come, blessed savior, human health defend, and to the mortal life afford a prosperous end,” he finishes, placing the sheet down beside him. 

There’s a comfortable ringing silence between them. Zayn feels like they haven’t had this kind of quiet in a long time, a quiet where no one feels compelled to say anything stupid and currents of emotions – impossible to articulate – pass between them. He thinks about the luck involved in this gathering. For the most part they are older, better, wiser, more peaceful, and happier than ever together, even when things are exactly the same. How many people can say that about their best friends? How many people can say that having passed through all that they have passed through? Everyone is here, and intact. Small conflicts aside, they love each other. It seems easy to forgive out here on the stones, and he hopes that’s what they’re all doing now, in whatever capacity. As far as he believes, there is definitely something of god in this. The weird Styles kid was right to remind them of this, and he knows they all feel it. “Subhanallah,” he says out loud. 

“Amen,” says Louis, soft around the edges for another minute. “Thanks, Haz.” And then: “Did you put in that bit about the luscious hair?”

Harry smiles serenely, shaking his head. The rest of them lose it laughing.

***

The helicopter ride back is fine, in part because Liam chats himself in circles the whole trip home about whether the ancient Greeks were smarter than we are now because people were more interested in talking about deep things, or if it just seems that way because more people are alive now so people have more hobbies in general and philosophy and politics are still around but it _looks_ like they’re not as popular, because there’s so much of everything else, but mostly because Zayn is too distracted by the way Louis’ knee appears to be pressing into Harry’s elbow, as though Asklepios has unlocked their ability to touch each other, to think about falling out of the sky. 

***

The sun dips down into the sea and they round out a day of not-writing by doing more not-writing with another bottle of ouzo and a slab of beer (“We’ve done enough for our health today,” says Niall, clinking his can against Liam’s) and things slide into sloppiness till they’re debating which Spice Girl each of them feels most connected to. Unsurprisingly Liam the lightweight passes out cold on the couch around eight, leaving the four of them minus Sporty Spice for their Stop singalong.

“You just walk in, I make you smile, it’s cool but you don’t even know me,” warbles Harry, untying and retying his headscarf.

Niall valiantly steps up to the plate, taking on Sporty as well as his own Baby. “You take an inch, I run a mile, can’t win you’re always right behind me! And we know that you can go and find some other, take or leave it or just don’t even bother!” 

“Caught in a craze, it’s… um…” Zayn mutters, having not committed Spice Girls lyrics to memory in quite the same way, apparently. 

“JUST A PHASE, OR WILL THIS BE AROUND FOREVER,” supplies Harry, no longer preoccupied with his hair and up on his feet. His shirt one button away from total redundancy, he climbs onto his chair. He is much too big for it.

Louis, not to be outdone, does the same. “Don’t you know it’s goin too fast! Racin so hard you know it won’t last! Don’t you know, why can’t you see—”

Niall belts into his fork. “Slow it down, read the sign, so you know just where you’re goin!” 

Then the four of them are on the floor in a row, some kind of performance sense memory, all eyes on Louis for the appropriate dance moves, harmonizing absolutely terribly – “STOP RIGHT NOW, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, I NEED SOMEBODY WITH A HUMAN TOUCH! HEY YOU, ALWAYS ON THE RUN GOTTA SLOW IT DOWN BABY GOTTA HAVE SOME FUUUN!”

Somewhere during the do do do dos Louis and Harry start shimmying towards each other à la Sandy and Danny. A very distant part of Zayn that’s still capable of processing information thinks _oh fuck_ , but instead of doing anything about it he leaps forward, snatches the fork from Niall, and busts out the absolute best falsetto he’s capable of right now, going into a run Savan would’ve been proud of.  “— stay that way foreeeeeeeverrrrrrrrrrr!”

In one choreographed motion they collapse in a giggling heap on the deck, a bunch of extremely undignified former boybanders. Flat on his back, Louis starts clapping. “Round of applause, lads, round applause, did ourselves proud, didn’t we. The One Direction legacy lives on.”

“WOOOooo,” cheers Niall, sinking down into a chair. Zayn army crawls over to join him, resting his back against the chair’s legs, his head by Niall’s lap. Niall reaches out blindly, covering Zayn’s face with his palm, and Zayn, not one to miss an opportunity, bites his friend’s hand. He hears Niall’s soft laugh and closes his eyes for just a minute, just to rest them.

When he comes to it’s well and truly night and Harry and Louis seem to have disappeared, and all of a sudden he’s a lot more sober. “Just like old times,” he mumbles, rubbing his eyes.

“What?” asks Niall, who’s more awake than he is and has pulled a harmonica from god knows where to blow on idly. Liam’s still sound asleep.

“Nothing,” says Zayn. “Let’s go for a walk, Nialler.”

 

 

They head down onto the dark beach, barefoot in the cold sand, and start meandering over to the other end of the bay. 

“How are things with Kaya?” Zayn asks, as Niall dodges around some shells.

“They’re good, yeah,” says Niall. Zayn forgets that Niall’s almost as quiet about his relationships as he himself is, but he gives him some time, and after a bit Niall says, “I’ve been looking at some houses. Bigger, less bachelor pad ones.”

Zayn’s eyebrows shoot up. It must be serious. “Together?” he asks cautiously.

“Nah, I mean – we haven’t spoken about it – but just in case, I’ve started having a look around. It might be time to move on. I dunno. I’m not in the family way yet, but I’m not getting any younger and my place is worth a bit right now.”

“Such a sensible lad,” says Zayn. “Nothing phases you, huh?”

Niall shrugs, dodging a crab. “What’s there to be phased by? We’ve got charmed lives, Zayner. There’s nothing to complain about.”

From somewhere close by there comes a muffled giggle, startling them both. Niall freezes, looking at Zayn questioningly. Zayn brings a finger to his lips and pads over to a suddenly very suspicious cluster of rocks a few paces towards the sea, his heart racing. Would they? Now? What _happened_ at that shrine that he didn’t see?

Zayn stands on tiptoes to peer over the top of the largest rock, wondering if he’s going to regret this.

On the other side, both on their stomachs on a lower rock covered in kelp, are Harry and Louis. Harry laughs again, which sets Louis off, but Zayn can’t see what it is they’re laughing at. 

“What is going on here,” he says, satisfied that he isn’t interrupting anything of particular importance. He leans back before they can answer and beckons Niall, who immediately runs to join him. 

“Rock pools,” says Louis, looking up with a crooked grin. “Molllllluss. Usk. Mollusks. Fishy bits.”

“When you stick your finger in the hole it squirts at you,” adds Harry with a cackle.

“He’s got grrrrrreat experience with that,” snickers Louis.

“You two are utterly pissed,” says Niall, faintly awed.

Harry and Louis exchange a sly look and Harry’s unable to contain his low bleat. Louis waves something in the air. “Cos I got the bottle, that’s why. You need the bottle to get blotto. ‘m a thinker. I’ve been blessed by a klepto t’day, got a good brain on.” He drops the bottle back down where it clinks on the rocks. Harry snatches it up again, howling “Asssssklepios! Not a klepto!” 

“All right, you pair of hazards,” says Zayn, unable to roll his eyes any further backwards into his head. “That’s enough. We’re taking you home.” He and Niall move around to a side where they can access the other two more easily. Niall grabs Harry’s hand and wrenches him up, and Zayn does the same for Louis. 

“We weren’t hurtin the ecosystem!” protests Harry, tripping over his feet. “I didn’t take anythin!”

“I know you didn’t, Haz,” murmurs Niall soothingly. Harry kicks out at the sand, for all the world one of Kashira’s contemporaries.

“Liiittle pony,” slurs Louis in Zayn’s ear, his eyes fixed on Harry. “Big pony, really. A big pony. Horse.”

For the second time that evening a flare goes off in Zayn’s head.

“Stay with me, man,” he says, marching them past the other two. “Let’s get you to bed.”

He manages to do this with minimal incident, replacing Louis’ wet shorts with a pair of clean boxers and setting a glass of water and two Neurofen on the bedside table. It’s not until Zayn’s fixing the covers that Louis speaks again, his eyes closed. “Too harsh on him sometimes. ‘e tries so hard.” 

“You’re okay,” says Zayn, smoothing the blanket over his friend. “There’s a lot of stuff in the past. You’ll sort it out.”

“M glad we’re here,” mutters Louis, turning over. “I’m still –” 

He passes out mid-yawn, his face buried in pillow. Zayn watches him for a few moments longer, as though he could divine the next few words from the rise and fall of Louis’ chest, but there are too many possibilities, and he doesn’t know what kind of answer he’s looking for anyway. He turns off the lamp and walks out, closing the door behind him. 

***

Everyone sleeps in except for Liam, who’s disgustingly cheerful and sweaty from his run when Zayn stumbles into the kitchen at eleven thirty.

“Found a great new route to the other side of the cliffs! We should all go tomorrow, take some snaps,” says Liam, ignoring Louis’ raptor-grade glare. Niall laughs.

“Maybe,” says Harry, after emptying a litre’s worth of water in about thirty seconds flat. He pours the last drops on top of his head, shaking his hair out like a dog. “Did anyone have any dreams they want to share? Anything to diagnose?”

Harry and Louis show no signs of trauma or embarrassment or even much of a hangover, so Zayn assumes they’re both still mentally and emotionally sound, more or less. 

“I dreamed I was eating spag bowl with Madonna,” says Niall. “And it turned out the spaghetti was coming from her head, which was made out of pasta.”

“Oi, go lather yourself up in the shower like a normal person!” screams Louis, the recipient of maybe a single droplet, in Harry’s direction. 

“You’re a noodle head,” Liam tells Niall. “Your cure is to stop colouring your hair.”

“Wouldn’t you like that,” smirks Harry at Louis, on a totally different track. Liam shoots a glance at Zayn, who nods very slightly. 

“Yes, I would, you’re filthy,” says Louis, squeezing past him to get his own water. 

Harry frowns. “It’s really terrible that there’s no filtration system here, I hate using all this plastic. When we leave maybe I’ll send someone round to install something. I wouldn’t have booked it if I’d known.” 

“Maybe you should start a foundation, Harry,” says Niall, deadpan. “You could call it Pure Styles.”

“Styles for Purification,” suggests Liam. 

“Yeah, I’ll consider it. You can all be on my Board of Directors,” says Harry, his expression pious. “And when we start copping flak for sounding like ethnic cleansing advocates I’ll point them your way.”

“‘Advocates’, ‘advocates’, I’ve got a big vocabulary, I’m a writer,” sings Louis.

“Louis,” says Zayn, “has anyone ever told you that you’re a fucking idiot sometimes?”

“He’s a fucking idiot all the time, and we love him just the way he is,” says Niall. “Breakfast and then we’ll get down to it?

“Eggs,” says Harry, flipping a tea towel over his shoulder and pulling his hair up into an elastic. “Who wants ‘em?”

They all do despite varying levels of queasiness, and Harry makes each to order, as well as bacon and toast and some kind of yoghurt thing with brown butter and sage that has them licking their plates. By the time Zayn finishes eating he feels much better.

“Wanna come round to my house, cook all our meals?” Zayn asks Harry. “You can play with the kids and I’ll pay you in bananas.” 

“Tempting as that sounds, it’s all pretty easy to do,” says Harry. He wipes a grease stain off his arm. Zayn’s not so sure, but at least Harry’s in a great mood to continue his unenviable task with Louis today. Except Louis – Zayn squints – Louis looks like he might be almost pleased about it, too. 

***

“Remember when Zayn was about to come to Florida but then he puked on the runway just as we were boarding and then the next day we got a question about whether he was on drugs? I reckon someone at the airfield must’ve seen and told someone, it was such a random question.”

Liam sounds puzzled in this remembrance. Zayn is not as amused by the memory. He thought he was home safe after they’d gotten to 2015 yesterday, but Liam didn’t think they’d spent enough time talking about how promo had changed around the time of Midnight Memories and onwards and now they’re talking Four. It’s not like they’re going to write the whole book now anyway, grumbles Zayn.

“We probably should talk about that, though,” he sighs. “I’ve never said a word about it and it was so fucking stupid.” He pauses, thinking. Niall’s poised at the keyboard. “I had a really bad stomach flu I completely, um, underestimated, but it ended up getting the better of me, and that meant I had a secret drug addiction. I saw the interview with that guy—” 

“Matt Lauer,” supplies Niall.

“—the next morning. I’d been sleeping all day after I got home from the airport. I was kind of feverish too and I remember I was annoyed because mum was worried and coming over to look after me, and she had lost her keys and I’d had the locks changed and hadn’t gotten her a new key made yet so she’d banged on the door just after I’d first gotten to sleep to let her in, and after that I only slept a few hours at a time. So I was already groggy and annoyed and sick and then I turn on the TV to make sure everything went okay and that fuckhead is asking if I have a drug habit.” 

“Changing ‘fuckhead’ to ‘journalist of questionable standards’,” says Niall, “but we might end up changing that too.”

“It’s not like I was a stranger to those kinds of allegations, I got them all the time, you know. Stuff about me as a Muslim trying to convert girls. Any time I spoke my mind about the middle east – I never responded to any of it, because I didn’t want to give anyone any more material to try to take me down and I didn’t want to give any of those idiots a reason to think they were important enough to actually hear from me. But here was this guy, a respected interviewer, and he just tossed that question out like he was asking you the meaning behind the album’s name, and he didn’t have any evidence, there were no rumours until he started one.” Zayn takes in a breath. “Obviously I’m not and wasn’t a drug addict. We smoked weed. I was very ill. I did not appreciate the cheap shot.”

He falls silent. Niall keeps typing.

“I did my best with that one,” says Liam, who looks upset with himself anyway. “It was awful not having you there that day. But you would have been so cold.”

“I know you did, mate,” says Zayn softly. “You handed it really well.”

Niall reads back the paragraph he has and Zayn corrects a few thoughts. He doesn’t want to come off sulky but he also doesn’t want to have to say much on the topic. Maybe they’ll end up deleting it entirely. He’ll see how he feels later.

“The Harry Potter section was cool,” remembers Liam. “After the concert. I still can’t believe what happened in Brazil with that album.” He scratches his chin. “They were just like, ‘Oooh, time to sell!’? They couldn’t read dates? And there was more security and passwords around Four than the NASA codes, I think, because they were so scared of being hacked, but in the end it was the physical thing that did us in.”

“NASA isn’t nearly as popular with the public, which is a shame,” says Niall.

“In Harry Potter world you got that Slytherin scarf and kept trying to wrap it around me,” says Harry, who comes sloping into the living room, Louis a few steps behind. Harry goes to perch on Niall’s armchair and Louis takes a seat next to Zayn on the couch. “Very humiliating. Everyone knows I’m a Gryffindor. My name is _Harry_.” He pats Niall on the head for emphasis.

“I dunno…” says Niall. “You can’t deny that you might be at least part Slytherin.”

“Let’s not have this conversation for the hundredth time, lads!” yells Louis. “You’re all Gryffindors, very brave, very good, who cares? Harry and I came in to say we’re bored. We want to do something.”

“Says the only one of us who bought the entire Gryffindor uniform,” notes Liam.

“Bored.” repeats Zayn suspiciously. “Bored” is one thing. “Procrastinating writing something that is both hard and confrontational despite our newly established truce” is another. Maybe last night did make things awkward for them.

“Yes, Malik, bored. Do I need to explain the concept to you, or are you completely unfamiliar with having nothing to do? I suppose you can always occupy yourself thinking about how pretty your face is.”

“No, Louis,” says Zayn solemnly. “I usually just think about your eyes.”

Louis rolls his eyes so hard Zayn wouldn’t be surprised if the gesture could be seen from space.

“Where are you guys up to?” asks Liam.

“Mmmmm,” says Harry. “We’re at, er, filming This Is Us, we skipped ahead a little, so…”

Zayn, Liam and Niall look at him.

“There’s no need for _that_ ,” says Louis. “We were just stuck, so we decided to try something further on.” 

“Weren’t you just starting Up All Night yesterday?” asks Niall. 

“Yes, but we couldn’t remember… where the couch was from… and it was really bugging us… and we… got sidetracked,” says Harry.

Couldn’t remember where the Chesterfield came from so they moved on to Ben Winston. Great. This is turning out great. Who knows why they’re actually having trouble with Up All Night – Zayn could name at least ten reasons. But if he were to take a wild guess it’s because Harry probably wants to talk about how many times he almost told the entire planet about what was going on with Louis mid-show. Louis probably doesn’t.

“Okay,” says Niall, snapping his laptop shut. “We’ve been going out of chronological order too today. We can take a break. What do you boys want to do?”

“I want to go to the beach,” says Harry. “The big one a few coves along. Where the locals go.”

“Young Harold here has already tired of our company,” says Louis. It’s a carelessly tossed-out remark, but Zayn senses it might be loaded. Harry’s restlessness and need to come into contact with people is in a way his oldest source of tension with Louis. Maybe that’s what set them off? Maybe Harry mentioned Grimshaw or something.

“No,” says Harry stubbornly. “The water there is warmer and it’s less dangerous. We can’t go into the sea on our beach without getting carried out into the rip, and I want a proper bracing swim. Get some salt in me. Exfoliate.”

“Will there be many people around?” Zayn is quite enjoying their bubble. It feels easy and safe, and much more appealing than venturing into the world at large.

“It’s two in the afternoon in March, and the weather is crappy,” says Niall. “If anyone’s out there they must be mad.”

***

There are two mad people on the windy beach – a lady who must be at least seventy and another old man walking his dog. Seven if you count their own group, which Zayn does. Anyway, two strangers are fine, especially since the seniors take no notice of them. Harry is the only idiot in the water; the rest of them are rugged up in jumpers on the sand wondering why the fuck they’re here.

“This is _stupid_ ,” says Louis.

“You don’t say,” says Zayn, furiously rubbing at his legs for warmth. Liam chucks him his jersey, which he takes gratefully and drapes over his lower body.

“Has anyone else noticed that Harry seems to be acting a bit weird,” Louis says casually, as though this is a natural extension of his previous comment. “He seems a little bit… juvenile.”

“He is being sort of babyish, yeah,” says Liam, who has probably now altered his chemical makeup in order to maintain a comfortable temperature. “But in his defense I understand it. Don’t you, Tommo?”

In the distance, the outline of Harry Styles gives off a spout of seawater like a very small whale.

“Classic case of regression,” says Niall.

“Niall’s about to therapise us all,” groans Louis.

“Hey,” says Liam, staring off into the dunes. “Guys! Look! Behind us! That’s the girl from my run the other day! She must live around here.” He turns around fully and smiles till his eyes disappear, waving hard. “Oh, she’s running away again. Maybe she thinks I’m a stalker.”

“I get it,” says Zayn. “You guys are writing about when he was sixteen. He’s feeling it harder again and he’s with you. It’s gonna come up. Don’t you feel any of it, Lou?”

“No. It’s not happening to any of you, either,” says Louis. Zayn actually disagrees. It has happened to all of them at different times, but not necessarily in the same way it’s affecting Harry. It’s like, and he’s always noticed this, if one of them is playing a certain role, another one will step in to fill a different one, and then they rotate. When Zayn is moody Harry and Niall turn class clowns, while Liam becomes mother hen and Louis takes charge. But if Louis is in a funk Zayn and Niall try to distract him and Liam is their spokesman. Harry will just wander off, possibly out of respect or maybe just bewilderment.

Harry’s gotten needy. So Niall’s in control, Louis and Liam are in their own worlds, and Zayn is mediator. Nothing he hasn’t seen before.

“Yeah, but Haz picks stuff up. You know that. I mean he’s not actually a child, no one needs to coddle him,” says Niall. “Just let it play out. He’s okay.”

“It’s strange, it’s like – you think you’re so mellow, you’re so finished with it, but –”

Harry comes bounding out from the sea, stopping Louis short.

“That was quick, Baby Tarzan,” says Liam. Beside him Niall shakes his head.

“Do you not see the small gang of people gathering up there?” asks Harry, pointing behind them. “They just appeared out of nowhere. It’s very weird.”

Everyone turns around.

“Oh, no, that’s just my friend returning. Hi!” says Liam, waving again. Louis wrenches his arm down.

“What are you doing? ‘Friend’?” he hisses. “Don’t you realise we haven’t all been seen out together in public in about two years?”

“Much longer if we’re talking candids,” says Niall.

Zayn squints. There are about ten figures up on the hill, most of them women. They all seem to be looking down – phones are involved – and are eerily quiet. “Fuck,” he says. The five of them remain frozen, unsure what to do.

“If they’re here for us, why aren’t they screaming?” asks Liam.

“I think the wind is blowing the sound in the opposite direction. It was hard to hear anything you were saying from the water.” Harry’s lips are blueish. He wraps his towel around himself tighter. Zayn notes how Louis’ eyes flick over the movement. 

One of the figures finally breaks away from the pack and rushes down towards them, full of excitement. Zayn hasn’t seen anyone look this simultaneously happy and terrified to see him in a long time. An old Waterstones signing memory flashes up at him – a line of crying girls squealing “Zayn, Zaaaaayn!” and Liam going “breathe, breathe,” on his right.

“Excuse me,” she pants, “One Direction? This is so amazing! I’ve loved you since I was 17! Can we take a picture?”

Zayn, slightly shell-shocked, just blinks at her. He can feel that Louis, Liam and Niall doing the same. They’re very rusty.

In an instant Harry ducks to the forefront, his whole being changed, open, ready. “Of course,” he says. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Gina,” she says, and Zayn recognises the far-away quality of her voice, that classic hypnotised-by-the-presence-of-real-life-Harry-Styles tone.

“Well, Gina,” says Harry, smiling reassuringly at her as the words “perfect popstar” ring in Zayn’s ears, “Give your phone to Niall, he’s always been the best of us at taking group selfies.”

This spurs the rest of them into action and they cluster around her for a picture.

“Louis, don’t do that thing with your eyes,” teases Liam.

“Don’t tell me what to do, Payne,” says Louis, poking him in the head. Niall keeps snapping away, capturing all of this. Zayn stares at himself on the phone’s screen. He looks quite happy, he thinks, and pretty good. Well-rested. Hair is behaving nicely. Still knows how to work an angle. He smiles wider at this. Niall takes one last shot and then hands the device back to her.

“Thank you so so much,” says Gina. “You don’t know what you mean to me. I never thought I’d see you here! Oh my god, this is the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m shaking.”

“Don’t shake!” says Harry, slapping at her hand. Zayn’s déjà vu intensifies.

“That’s the thing,” says Louis. “No one knows we’re here except you and your friends. Do you think you could keep the secret for us? We’re just, you know, we’re on holiday, we’re relaxing, we don’t want the whole world to come looking for us. Would you do us a favour and keep that picture off social media for a week? We’d really appreciate it.” Harry nods.

“Yes, yes, anything, of course, sorry, I don’t mean to cause trouble –”

“Guys.” says Liam, who’s gone stock-still.

Zayn turns around.

It’s like a scene from Shaun of the Dead. Somehow while they were taking the photos the small group of people on the dunes has multiplied into a crowd, and Zayn supposes it was naïve that he didn’t think there were this many people in the area to cause a problem, but there they are, a hundred expectant faces, some leaping up and down to try to get a better look at the five of them. They’re all just standing there, watching.

Niall picks up his tote bag.

Liam yells “run!” just as the hoard begins to descend upon them. Zayn has time enough to think of the antelope stampede in The Lion King but that’s about it before he and the boys take off pell-mell, sand flying from their heels. Niall is beside him, his chest heaving, Harry and Louis flanking them and Liam out in front. Most of the girls peel off but there’s a cluster of them Zayn can hear behind them screaming their names.

Liam bolts into the scrub at the beach’s edge and Zayn, diving after him, sincerely hopes he knows what he’s doing. He holds a branch back so that Niall can get past easier, then they push on ahead. Thankfully the bushes quickly thin out into a clearing, where Liam is waiting. 

“Did any of them follow you?” he asks.

“Just us, I think,” comes Louis’ voice.

“Good, because we’re going to have to go single file for this part,” says Liam. He leads them down a narrow path – if it’s meant to be that at all – Zayn’s heart still thudding away. He is way too old for this. Ten minutes or three hours or a hundred days later they emerge at the side of the road.

“That’s our driveway across there,” says Liam. “Good thing I’ve been doing some exploring. I think they were only running because we were running.”

“Good… thing…” mutters Zayn.

Harry and Louis exchange a glance and burst out laughing. Harry tumbles to the ground, choking “exploring!”, while Louis wipes a tear of hysteria from the corner of his eye.

“What the fuck,” says Niall.

***

Harry and Louis continue hooting and conspiring in stereo as they all make their way inside, drunk off some kind of inside joke. Niall makes a beeline for the laptop. Zayn feels like he needs a shower or six hundred but there isn’t really anything he can wash away, it’s just a variation on the breech he felt with the nanny, the same kinds of invasions happening over and over and over again, making it hard to remember where his boundaries are. In a daze, he texts Perrie: “fuck”. She replies: “??? Call me? Xxxxx”

“That was a blast from the past,” is what he says to the others.

“I’m sorry,” says Liam, guiltily. “I really thought she was harmless. I thought we were running mates.”

 “WHERE’S YOUR ADRENALINE RUSH? TONY STARK MUST FEEL LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME!” Louis yells. “LIKE THAT FIRST LANDING AT HEATHROW!”

Harry flops over backwards onto the couch, giggling. “They pushed us so hard into that van, I think I had a bruise from Liam’s arm jammed into my stomach for a week –”

“Are you sure that was Liam’s arm?” smirks Louis.

“Harry,” says Liam.

Another text from Perrie. “Are u OK? Calling in a sec.”

“I thought they were going to rip my sleeve clean off.”

“Harry,” Liam says again.

“Can never keep those things in check, Styles, always need a bit of help,” says Louis.

“I am perfectly capable of doing my own sleeves, thanks! You _like_ fixing –”

Liam waves his arms in Harry’s face. “Harry! What’s the number for security here? I think we should bump it up for a while?”

“Oh, yeah, probably,” says Harry.

“We’re okay, though, right? They don’t actually know where the house is, just that we’re here in the general area?”

“It’s on social media,” calls Niall from the kitchen counter. He swings his laptop around. Sure enough, 1DREUNION is trending. “And here,” says Niall, clicking to a different window that has a few grainy pictures of them on the beach. “That one’s making the blog rounds. Got some weird but standard tags on it.”

“Don’t –” says Louis.

“‘Baes’, ‘babes’, ‘babies’,” reads Niall.

Liam peers over his shoulder. “‘All my children’,” he chuckles. “‘Are the four horsemen here, I think the apocalypse is coming’, ‘I’m lying in a ditch face down my lungs slowly filling up with water’, ‘never thought I would live to see this day again’, ‘After all this time? Always’? I don’t get that one. ‘I see Harry still has his extra nipples, sweet deer came back just in time to… breastfeed… my newborns’?”

Harry kicks his legs into the air with glee and an expelled “HA!”

Liam takes this opportunity to grab Harry’s phone and make the call for reinforcement.

Perrie’s face fills Zayn’s screen. “Good to know some things never change,” he says weakly. “I’m, um. I’m going to… yeah.”

He hits accept and heads down the hall to debrief.

***

The result is: two extra guards outside the front door. An entreaty to exercise some common sense if they decide to venture outside (“Good luck with that one,” snorts Louis). And a call from Paul, who threatens to come out of retirement and ship them off home one by one if they aren’t more careful in the future.

“CAN YOU COME HERE ANYWAY, PAUL?” yells Harry from across the room at Liam’s phone, which is on speaker. “I MISS YOU.”

“I have no desire to see any of you idiots, so keep it together,” says Paul.

“That doesn’t explain your One Direction Google alert,” Louis points out.

“Reputation to uphold,” says Paul solemnly. “Here’s my advice: everyone listen to Niall. Louis, stop trying to switch Liam’s hair gel out for sugar syrup.”

“I never–!”

“Harry, get off your phone.”

Harry’s face goes stormy and then petulant, but his rapid-fire texting stops.

“Zayn, love to the missus. Don’t give me any more heart attacks, I’m too old for this shit.”

With that he hangs up. Everyone looks around at each other, suddenly feeling much younger and very much more foolish.

“Right,” says Niall. “Movie time?”

***

Zayn passes out on Liam at some point before Wedding Crashers but after Louis has shifted over so that his head is resting against the bottom cushion of Harry’s armchair, just to the left of Harry’s legs. Zayn is not too tired to notice how tightly Harry is gripping the seat in the space between his body and Louis’. He is, however, too tired to have any further thoughts about it.

 

 

He wakes up the next morning alone on the couch with a blanket covering him that he doesn’t think he fell asleep with and a pair of pants on his head that he _definitely_ didn’t fall asleep with. These come off immediately – thankfully, they’re clean.

He stretches and makes his way over to the kitchen, where he finds Niall anxiously fussing over leftover cold meatballs. “Good, you’re up,” says Niall, hurrying over to Zayn and grabbing his arm. “You have to see this.”

Zayn is not awake enough for this. “What are you –”

“Shh,” says Niall, pulling him outside. He crouches down behind two comically large pot plants just in front of the sliding doors and points to the deckchairs on the other side of the pool.

Louis is lounging on a chair with a plate of toast in between his legs. That’s not unusual. What’s unusual is the Harry more or less straddling the end of the same chair facing Louis. Zayn can’t quite hear their conversation but Louis is… laughing. While he’s distracted Harry’s hand darts out and snatches a triangle of toast from by Louis’ thigh. He shovels the whole thing in his mouth before Louis can steal it back, grinning smugly as Louis cries foul, and then he pointedly licks some jam off his fingers in a way that is not about cleanliness. Louis’ mouth goes slack for a moment but he manages to get hold of himself in time to grab the remaining piece; Harry lurches forward to fight him for it, scrabbling ineffectively at Louis’ arms while Louis holds the toast high above his head – although not high enough that Harry couldn’t reach it if he actually tried.

Zayn is mesmerised. It’s like he’s watching the mating habits of a pair of extinct birds.

“What happened while we were sleeping?” he wonders aloud.

“I think yesterday did something to them. I don’t really know what. Triggered an old feeling of like… danger or necessity or co-dependency or something that brought Louis round. It’s so weird, I dunno if it’s good –”

Just then a running gear-clad Liam comes bolting out. “We have a problem,” he pants to the pool at large, then looks down. “What are you two doing back here?”

“Zayn thought he dropped his ring,” says Niall quickly, straightening up and making a show of looking around the deck.

“What problem?” calls Louis, not sounding particularly concerned. Harry chews the now surrendered bit of toast serenely as directs his laser focus at Liam. “Fucking hell, Liam, don’t tell us you saw your pal again.”

“Um,” says Liam.

“Why’d you go out again by yourself?” asks Zayn.

“I took Peter with me,” says Liam stubbornly. “And I went a completely different route. But.”

“But what?” asks Harry.

“But I think maybe now they know which house we’re in.”

“Are you fucking _serious_ ,” groans Louis.

“Do we have to move, then?” Niall, being practical.

“No, I think we just have to sit tight for a little bit while they deal with it,” says Liam.

“So it’s a siege. We’re stuck here.”

Niall walks to the kitchen and back again. Zayn fights the urge to follow him – he’s a big boy, he’ll let them know if he needs anything. But this is not good.

“We weren’t going to move anyway,” says Harry, who has the relaxed air of someone who is exactly where they want to be.

“Yes, but now we _can’t_ ,” says Louis, who has the jittery air of someone who isn’t, or else is, and is fighting it. He finally gets up off the deck chair and into a space that isn’t hemmed in by Harry Styles.

“Writing tiiime!” says Niall. “No fucking around.”

***

“—and _that’s_ how you birth a calf,” finishes Liam, beaming as he imparts this kernel of farm know-how to them, and everyone – except Harry – is wearing identical expressions of disgust.

“Thanks, Liam,” says Zayn faintly.

“Do you have any pictures of the babies?” asks Harry.

It’s four o’clock. They’ve done maybe an hour total of actual work today, punctuated by a hundred tea breaks, tangents as Niall goes down some Wikipedia history-of-siege wormhole, and updates from the security team, who are working to manage and divert the crowd, which, they’ve been informed, is currently about a hundred-strong at its deepest around the publicly accessible perimeter of the house. “Persistent, but for the most part obedient” is the official word from the top. It sounds familiar.

Just then Zayn’s phone starts ringing. Everyone is now yelling over each other about cows so he jogs into the corridor to answer it. It’s Perrie.

“Hi,” he says, smiling.

“Hello, love, how’s it going?”

Zayn loves the sound of her voice. “Better now that I’m talking to you.” He starts to pace up and down the hall, tracing a crack in the wall.

“I miss you too,” she says. “Listen, I don’t want to get you too anxious, I’m sure it’s nothing, but I just thought you should know, just in case –”

“What’s happening?” he interrupts, panic rising in his throat. “Is it the girls? Are you okay, do you need me to –”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” she says quickly. “We’re all fine. It’s just – Kashi, be a good girl for mummy, put that down, please, there’s a darling – it’s just –” she gets quieter – “I’m sure it’ll turn up, but the camera’s missing.”

“What camera?” he asks, frowning.

“The fancy video one my mum gave us to make tapes for Granny Nancy right after Kash was born, _remember_ ,” she says. Zayn doesn’t.

Then he does.

“We deleted that stuff, right? It was five seconds. Less. I definitely deleted it.”

“I think we did. It was so stupid, Zayn, we were so stupid, I don’t know why we thought – and now it’s missing – I’m going to keep looking, I’ve turned the bedroom upside down, but I’m just – I’m freaking out a bit, it’s exactly what she’d need, even though we were laughing the whole time, I’m not sure you can even see anything, I just –”

“No, no,” he murmurs, sliding down onto the cold stone. In all the chaos here he’d almost forgotten the shit going on at home. “It’s okay, it’s okay. We didn’t do anything wrong. It’s okay. 

Perrie draws in a breath. “I know. I’ll keep looking, I – do you want to speak to your mum?” she asks, suddenly brighter. Trisha must be with her now.

“Yeah,” says Zayn, his head buzzing. “Go on.”

Zayn chats to his mother for a few minutes, listening to her breezy update about how she re-organised the pantry so that everything fits and how she’s got Kashira making biryani with her now, and he mmhmms his way through it all, which is good, because it gives him time to recompose himself, gather his thoughts 

“Thanks mum. Sounds like the girls are probably better in your hands.” He twists his wedding band. “Can you put Perrie back on for a minute? Love you.” 

Perrie comes back. “I have to run, Zayn, I’m late for lunch with Jade –”

“I know, I just wanted to tell you – don’t worry about it. Even if she has it it’ll be okay. What’s she going to do with a few grainy seconds of two people fumbling about in the dark? I didn’t even remember us taking it. And even if it gets out – which it won’t – it’s going to be fine. I’ll fix it. Don’t worry.”

“Okay,” says Perrie, who doesn’t sound entirely convinced. “I love you, Bradford lad.”

“Love you too,” he says, ending the call and getting back up from the floor. Shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Shit.

He walks back into the living room. Niall’s got the guitar out and they’re all playing around, singing campfire songs but replacing the all words with “pita pocket”.

“What’s wrong, mate? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” says Liam.

“Perrie thought Farah had a temperature,” Zayn lies, sitting down in the armchair. “But it’s all right now.”

Niall starts singing “cheer up, sleepy Farah” and Liam joins in with relish, the two of them making short work of the Monkees. Zayn feels like he wants to bust out of his skin a little. Instead he just pokes Niall on the nose and watches as Louis’ hand creeps towards Harry’s thigh and then back again.

***

Zayn’s about to get into bed when he realises that he hasn’t brushed his teeth, which is disgusting even if he is a distracted mess. He wrenches himself up with a sigh and pads down the hall to the bathroom he shares with Harry – and stops. There’s a wedge of light on the stone from where the door is cracked open, and there are two voices coming from inside. Ordinarily this wouldn’t give him reason for pause, but the person giggling “Stop it!” is Harry and the person whisper-screaming “Nooooo!” is Louis.

Zayn tiptoes further down the hall till he gets a very limited view of what’s going on. From the looks of things Louis has smeared toothpaste on Harry’s chin and is chasing him around, tube in hand, as Harry leaps and twists to escape. He is not doing a very good job.

“Stay _still_ ,” Louis complains. He pins Harry so that he’s backed against the tub with his legs between Louis’, the toothpaste down by his side. Harry has what he probably thinks is an expression of defiance plastered on his face, but mostly he just looks like the cat that got the canary. A similar look of entranced smugness curls across Louis’ mouth. 

“You’re dripping on my foot, Harold.”

“I am n— hey! I thought you didn’t remem…ber…”

Zayn feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle and rise.

Louis leans in and kisses Harry.

As soon as their lips touch Harry makes a small noise of surprise and pleasure and melts forward, one hand seeking out Louis’ his waist, the other burying itself in his hair. His whole body looks like a sigh, curved towards Louis like a plant reaching for the sun. They’re a little unsteady and awkward at first, but after slight nose bump misstep Louis starts laughing and that sets Harry off too, and then it’s Louis’ hands creeping up to Harry’s shoulders, Louis pushing back, Harry steadying himself against the bath and kissing Louis harder, Louis responding with the same urgency, Harry’s hand slipping down to Louis’ ass, Louis moaning, and then –

“I remember,” says Louis. “And I missed you.”

Harry pulls back. His hands fall from Louis, and now it’s Louis’ turn to look young and hopeful and nervous, Louis’ turn to wait. Harry looks so, so serious, like he’s assessing Louis, but Zayn suspects he’s actually just taking the moment in.

“I’ve always been here,” Harry says, softly.

“It’s not that simple.”

“I know,” says Harry. He hasn’t moved. “I missed you too.”

Louis laughs hollowly. “We’re so fucking st–”

Harry grabs him and they fall back kissing again, this time against the sink. Harry manages to spin the two of them around and without coming up for air they stumble in the general direction of the door.

 _Shit_ , thinks Zayn. He unglues his feet from the floor and flees back down the hall to his room, all notions of cleaning his teeth forgotten. Shit shit shit shit shit.

***

The next morning Harry’s cheerfully eating breakfast at the counter; Louis is nowhere to be seen. Niall says most of the people outside are gone but they’re still doing sweeps and they’ve been told to stay put till further notice.

“They’re hoping to have it all cleared up by the end of the day,” relays Liam.

“Fine with me!” sings Harry, radiating contentedness the likes of which Zayn hasn’t seen in years. The flashing neon sign above his head that says “JUST HAD SEX WITH LOUIS” hasn’t lost any of its shine, then.

Time to work on the less transparent of the two.

Louis’ door is closed. Zayn knocks hard.

“Fuck off, I’m having a wank!” yells Louis.

Zayn shows himself in.

Louis is curled up on his bed texting – Zayn would bet a million dollars he’s talking to his mum. He looks up and raises his eyebrows.

“Oh. It’s you,” he says.

Zayn settles next to him, stretching his legs out. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No.” A beat. “Dunno.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” asks Zayn.

“Probably not,” says Louis blithely.

“Okay,” says Zayn. He figured as much, so he came prepared. He draws in a breath.

“Our old nanny might be trying to blackmail us and a video camera we filmed like a tenth of the beginning of a sex tape on is missing.”

“WHAT?” yelps Louis, bolting upright. “Jesus fucking – how long has this been going on?”

“About a month,” admits Zayn. He’d told himself he would have to make some kind of offering first if he wanted to get anything out of Louis, but to be honest it feels good to finally hand over this secret to someone he trusts. What a fucking cliché. “Nothing’s happened, she was just snooping around and she made some comments. We fired her. The camera is most likely under the bed.”

“Even if she hasn’t made a move yet, maybe she’s building a case against you – if you fired her she’ll be even angrier, Zayn, you have to discredit her so she can’t go to anyone with anything! What’s her name, we can call –”

Zayn can’t help it, he starts laughing to himself.

“What,” says Louis.

“Just… nothing. I just knew that’s what you were going to say.”

“I’m saying it because it’s true! You might think you’re just a normal person again these days, but you aren’t, Zayn, none of us are, and none of us ever will be. You think no one’s interested in what you do? There are a million people who would pay a fucking mint to know what’s on your top kitchen shelf!”

“It’s spices, mum just rearranged it,” Zayn mutters. “Probably, like, ten different kinds of cumin.”

“Zayn. Don't joke. Promise me you’re going to do something about this.” Louis looks at him, corners of his mouth twitching. “Or you’ll get what’s cumin to you.”

“Oh?” says Zayn, widening his eyes. “Don’t joke? What about you? Has someone been hanging around a certain someone too much lately? Has a certain _someone_ with a fondness for terrible puns been _rubbing off_ on you, Lou?"

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Louis.

“Don’t you? You, with your un-normal life?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” says Louis, pushing Zayn away.

“I’m not looking at you like anything, mate. No judgment. Like I said, I just wanted to know if there was anything you want to talk about.”

Louis sighs and faceplants forward into the bed. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he snuffles.

“What’s happening?” echoes Zayn, relieved that his strategy seems to be working. 

“I just _said_ —”

“I mean literally. What is happening with you two. In terms of action.”

Louis unfurls himself slowly, his hair sticking up every which way. He stares at a pillow that has somehow found its way into the corner of the room, refusing to meet Zayn’s eyes. “We, um. Last night.”

Zayn says nothing, then realises his silence is being interpreted as criticism. “It’s okay,” he says quickly. “I don’t need all the details.” Louis says nothing. “Did you enjoy yourself, at least?”

Louis shoots him a dagger glare.

“Right, right,” says Zayn.

“No, look. I mean. Yes, obviously, because it’s –” Louis scrubs his hand across his face. “I don’t know, I feel, I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s out of control because nothing has actually changed. He’s still Harry. I’m still me. We’re a fucking disaster, as you well know.”

“You weren’t always,” says Zayn.

“I know, whatever, once it was good, once it was great, we made each other happy. Fuck that. It wasn’t sustainable, Zayn. It was intense because we were kids! And we were stupid about it! Running around the world pretending we were, like, fucking rebels because we couldn’t hold hands in public.”

Zayn shakes his head. “Like you would have done that if it was allowed anyway.”

“Listen, even if it had just been me and him, even if the band didn’t become the band, we would have exploded. We’re not the same at all. Harry would always have wanted something more. I would never have been enough for him. We would have broken up anyway, maybe fucked again once or twice down the line, but we wouldn’t have ended up together.”

“That’s a harsh assessment, and it’s not what’s happening now.”

“What’s happening now is we’re bringing this stuff up, like Niall said, and we’re remembering the good and it’s happening again, but it’s not – there’s no reality to it –” 

“There’s no reality to what you’re feeling for this current Harry in this current moment?” asks Zayn quietly.

Louis gets up and brings the tossed pillow over to the bed, punching it with his fist a few times. “Of course I care about him,” he says, after a while. “I just can’t do this again when I know – but I am doing it again, so, I don’t know. Fuck it.”

“Do you want my opinion, or do you want to keep going?”

“Yes,” says Louis, unhelpfully.

“I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing,” says Zayn slowly. “Although I was worried. I’ve been, like, worried about both of you. But I’ve always told you I think you two need to talk about it, you know that. And I think it’s been long enough that you can do it, because I think you’re wrong, Lou, you aren’t twenty anymore, you’re a force to be reckoned with. You built our career and your own and you’re the smartest person I know but I think this is the one thing you’ve never allowed yourself to confront –” Louis starts to interrupt. Zayn holds up a hand. “— and I don’t blame you, I think if I had walked away from Perrie and you boys weren’t behind me to tell me when I was being an idiot I might never have looked back. But you did tell me. So now I’m trying to do the same for you. I get not talking to him when it was happening, I just think that now you have this opportunity to try to help each other understand, and maybe finally settle some things you couldn’t before.”

“You think we have unfinished business. Like the ghosts in Casper.”

“If you genuinely think this is an area of your life that can’t be improved, if you don’t ever wonder if – if despite your track record you _weren’t_ right about what was happening in Harry’s head, if you never second guess what you want or if you feel you could walk away now and be okay with the state of your relationship in a week, a month, a year – whatever, okay, then you can ignore me.”

Zayn gets off the bed.

“I just wanted to put my hand up so you can see I’m telling you to go for it. But you already knew that,” he says, smiling, “or else you wouldn’t have come here in the first place.” 

Louis blinks at him, silent.

Zayn gives a self-deprecating little salute and leaves, closing the door behind him.

***

Outside, Liam is doing pushups in the living room and Harry has roped Niall into doing a weird dance of some sort that he supposedly learned from Jeff Azoff. Everyone seems a little loopy. Zayn pours himself some juice and watches from the kitchen counter. 

Beside him the laptop Harry and Louis have been using is open and their Word doc is still up, and Zayn can’t resist – he hunches over to read what the two of them have written lately.

“A lot of people thought They Don’t Know About Us was written as a clue to alert people of what was going on between the two of us (some people thought of lots of totally innocent things were secret signals from us to them. Sometimes we couldn’t even eat a bit of toast in public without accusations, which was weird). But to clarify a point that’s been bugging us since the release of Take Me Home: we didn’t have any hands in writing that song [H thinks this is a valid way of using this saying, NH please check, it’s probably wrong]! It was written by a number of musicians involved in the country music scene – Tebey Ottoh and Tommy Lee James, amongst others – and our good friend and producer Julian Bunetta brought it in and played with it till it sounded more like the rest of the album. He had no clue! It was just more of a classic boyband-y song.

When we recorded it we didn’t think much of the connection (although Harry swears he brought it up). It was a really solid track that got a fair bit of attention when Take Me Home came out, and then we were planning that tour and for one reason or another it was left out of the set list – there were so many other songs, the arenas were going to be so much bigger and we had to think about the kind of ambiance we were going for. It just didn’t make the cut. That’s when things started to snowball, because people were saying we purposefully didn’t sing it – it would give too much away. 

This seemed pretty funny to us. What further was there to give away? The track was on the album. Would singing it live somehow mean something new? That we were ready to come out in a cloud of fairy dust and romantic horseback rides? [H thinks this sentence is too mean.] We weren’t “avoiding” the song, we just weren’t playing it. It was all purely coincidental. Another coincidence: that we could often be found snogging at the back of the tour bus while the others watched Step Brothers for the hundred thousandth time, which indeed, They Did Not Know About Us [we are definitely getting rid of that one, irrelevant].”

Zayn bites back a smile. Irrelevant but true. It seems miraculous that there’s a world in which Louis is even willing to let that sentence exist on paper – on a computer, whatever – and not triple locked in a vault buried under a lot of dirty clothes somewhere in deepest Siberia. For someone so cautious about revealing any part of his relationships to people he doesn’t know this is such a huge leap, and it’s happened so quickly. Does that not mean there’s a whiff of danger about it? 

He glances up as Louis comes in, his hair messy and his face soft, and without making any barbed remarks about the idiocy of anything occurring around him sits down in the stool closest to where Harry is now tussling with Niall.

“Morning,” he says, ostensibly to everyone.

“Morning,” only Harry responds from beneath Niall’s elbow.

And probably, thinks Zayn, “danger” is a bit extreme. Chances are he’s just projecting his own problems onto the nearest available source right now.

***

You should absolutely never make blanket statements about how fine everything’s going to turn out when it comes to certain things that are historically able to turn from fine to not-fine on a hairpin, Zayn discovers. He may as well have laid out the table for a nice candlelit dinner with trouble. 

It starts when he’s digging through a clothesbasket in the tiny laundry closet for his black Henley. He knows it’s most likely in Harry’s room, but he isn’t willing to go hunting in there just yet, given the situation last night. All of a sudden Niall and Liam crash into the small space.

“Shut the door!” hisses Niall to Liam, who does so.

“What’s going on?” Zayn asks, alarmed. “Is it the girls?” 

“No,” says Niall. “Can’t you hear it? Harry and Louis are warming up for battle—”

“And we were about to get caught in the crossfire so we just, erm, made a run for it,” finishes Liam. 

Zayn turns off the dryer, which has been emitting a considerable hum. Sure enough, Louis’ voice comes loud and clear and full of anger.

“—always running around with fucking _Nick Grimshaw_ doing god knows what – do you think it was easy for me?”

And Harry’s, marginally softer but just as forceful. “If you’d asked me what was going on I would’ve told you! You never asked! I thought you didn’t want to know!” 

“Shit,” murmurs Zayn. “What set them off?”

“Harry asked if they should talk about Eleanor,” says Niall.

Zayn slumps against the washing machine.

“I definitely fucking know what it looked like! And you can say what you like, you rubbed that shit in my face time and time again! Raising questions for all the rest of us while you thought about _your_ image and _your_ problems before the band’s, making us look like deviants by contrast, and then going around deliberately giving everyone room to speculate, making all these vague but pointed comments and getting away with everything because you’re Harry fucking Styles, Saint Harold, patron of tolerance, niceness, hanging round with older men—” 

This must strike something in Harry, whose tone turns scathing. “Yeah? Yeah? Is it the _band’s_ image you were concerned about then, all those years? Our brand? That was your problem? You, Louis Tomlinson, never had a moment where the big picture wasn’t in mind? When you were sitting in a car with a phone that didn’t belong to you and filming you and Zayn smoking and talking idiotic big talk, that was you exercising your trademark caution and thinking about the band, was it?”

“Oh yeah, that lapse of judgment is _completely_ on par with a lifetime of daring people to believe what they want to believe, dancing around and never actually getting your hands dirty when shit was going down!”

“What shit?” cries Harry. “What shit? Why are you trying to make this about the band? Louis, I wanted your attention! I was young and I needed you to look at me! For close to an entire year you wouldn’t even look at me! Do you have any idea how bad that felt? When all of a sudden I was invisible to you?”

“We agreed—” 

“We agreed to nothing! We agreed to tone it down because it seemed like everyone talking about us was overshadowing the rest of what we were doing! We never agreed to stop! We never agreed to see other people! I just woke up one day and you weren’t there and you never told me why, so I took my cues from you, as per usual, and I backed away! I was giving you time and space because I thought that’s what you wanted and you made me feel like I was less than human! I wasn’t there to you! It was just you and Eleanor!”

“I TOLD YOU, DON’T –” screams Louis with terrifying strength, “DON’T YOU DARE BRING HER INTO THIS, I FUCKING SWEAR—” 

There’s a muffled thud. “Sounds like he’s kicked a chair over,” says Liam.

“There is an episode of Friends _exactly_ like this,” says Niall. “How do we know they aren’t doing this on purpose? Maybe it’s a show.”

“Are you okay, Niall? Do you want to go out?” Zayn looks hard at his friend. 

“Yeah, fine,” mutters Niall, but his fingers grip the doorframe. “I’ve never heard Harry talk this fast before.”

“I am doing this monumental thing, coming here and writing this shit down,” comes Louis’ voice, now icy and lethal, “and you are using it as a platform to make me confess my sins or something and pretend it wasn’t your fault. And now you got what you wanted from me, which is what _you_ always do, by the way.”

“I do know it’s my fault,” says Harry, much quieter. “I’ve always known that. All I’m doing is trying to understand it – to understand you.”

“I’m doing my best to jump through your hoops. I’m sorry if that isn’t good enough for you.”

“You have always been good enough for me,” says Harry.

There’s a long and pregnant pause. Zayn tries not to get too hopeful, but maybe, just maybe –

“It’s the same for me even now, you know, when I’m with you. I still feel the same about you as I’ve always done.”

Zayn groans. Not good. Not good. He needs to wait Louis to process before speaking out again, even Zayn knows that.

Harry continues. “I know it’s the same for you – last night proved – I won’t ever be more connected to anyone in my life, with you, or the others, and it used to scare me sometimes, because I didn’t know what would happen afterwards, like, how I would learn to survive in the wild. And Nick was there and he made me feel like I could do it, that’s what that was at first… it reassured me there was a universe outside this, and I liked it, but that was never all I wanted. I wanted both things, and I assumed that – rightfully, I think? – this would always be here. We can be like this together and we can slot right back in! All of us. We’re a unit. I trust you more than anyone else, even when the shit hits the fan, _especially_ when the shit hits the fan. I grew up trusting you. I’ll die trusting you –” 

A bitter laugh from Louis. “That’s all very pretty and lovely, but time doesn’t freeze just for your own personal benefit, Harry. Last night proved nothing. You can’t just expect to come back to me whenever you like. You can’t even come back to the others. People change. Having faith in someone doesn’t mean knowing them. Fuck it, Zayn’s going through something major right now and he hasn’t even told anyone!”

Niall and Liam’s heads whip towards Zayn, who composes himself in the wake of this betrayal a little too late. His face goes blank; he knows he’s confirmed Louis’ words as the truth. “What?” whispers Niall. Liam’s tan seems to have drained from his body. There’s silence on the other side of the door. “It’s nothing – it’s not that big,” says Zayn, flushing. 

“Aren’t you, Zayn!” bellows Louis. “I know you can hear me! Aren’t you hiding something from everyone!”

“This isn’t fair,” says Liam, “he shouldn’t drag you into this, I’m sure there’s nothing –”

“Is everything okay?” Niall asks, just as Harry yells, “There’s nothing wrong with Zayn! Stop deflecting! If Zayn wanted to keep something to himself he can, it doesn’t mean we don’t love each other, can’t you just speak to _me_ for once, can’t you say something to me –” 

“Oh fucking Christ, I can’t be in here any more,” moans Niall, his fists clenching. “I can’t breathe.”

“I _am_ speaking to you, I’m telling you Zayn’s nanny is blackmailing him and he doesn’t even want to talk to us about it because sometimes people _don’t want to talk about things_ _with you_!” 

Zayn feels the breath go out of him just then. “Are you having an attack, Niall? Are you –” he reaches forward and Niall flinches; Liam tries to move over but it’s no good, the space gets tighter, and Niall breathes “Fuck, fuck,” and Louis screams “I’m not sugarcoating shit for you anymore!” and Niall bursts out the door.

“What the fuck is wrong with you two?” he yells at them, the shine of sweat across his forehead. “Why do you always do this? Why do you have to do this to _us_? Do you know what this shit did to us? _We were there too_. You almost – split us open! You’re here because we were strong enough to take this. But it’s been ten fucking years and you still can’t figure it out without dragging us into your stupid wars. I’ve been patient enough. I won’t fucking do it anymore. Fuck you, you selfish fucking idiots."

He storms away.

“Tell us how you really feel, Nialler,” says Louis. Harry’s face is blank.

“Don’t joke,” warns Zayn. “Niall is right. This is not cool.” Liam comes to stand next to him, tossing his snapback onto the couch and rubbing his head.

“I agree,” says Liam. “Since we’re speaking up. You need to take more responsibility for what is and what has gone on here.” Harry opens his mouth. Liam silences him. “Both of you. It’s never been easy for us. You tried to get us to take sides and you made life really uncomfortable and awkward and you never asked what it was doing to us. Everything was about you. Some days I’d wake up and wonder what band I was in, Louis’ band or Harry’s band. I didn’t like it. So. You need to think about that.”

“I’ve done everything I could,” is all Zayn says to them. “I can’t help you anymore.”

Everyone stares at each other, worn out.

Finally Louis snarls “Can’t even go the fuck outside because – fuck it!” and marches out the room. Down the hallway a door slams. Harry’s face is unreadable for a few more beats till suddenly it crumples, like the curtain’s been lifted and all the distress and sorrow of so many years are finally on show. He makes as if to follow Louis, but changes his mind mid-stride and disappears down the hall in the opposite direction.

Zayn drops to the couch. Liam does the same. 

“Is that true?”

“That I can’t help them? I feel it’s safe to say yes.”

“About the nanny.”

Zayn sighs.

“You could have told me, you know,” says Liam.

“I know,” says Zayn. “But you… didn’t tell me about the spoons thing,” he finishes lamely.

“That was a bit less drastic.”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “I know.”

“You must be really worried,” Liam says softly. “But we can help you, right? That’s always been the point of us, even when we’re not around.”

Zayn can’t believe that this is the conversation they’re having after what they’ve just been through, but that’s Liam for you. “I just thought… if I told you, that would prove it’s a big deal, and I wanted to forget about it. I’m sorry. I should have told you, but I didn’t want to scare you for no reason. I didn’t think you needed to hear.”

“Louis and Harry never thought each other needed to hear any of that and look where it got them. A blowout that’s about nine years overdue.” Liam gets up, paces. “Everyone just needs to calm down, sort it out.”

“I don’t know. I think the book’s fucked. I feel like once security’s done their job we’re all out of here, to be honest.”

When Liam looks at him again it’s with exhaustion in his eyes. “Maybe. But I hope you’re wrong.”

 

 

Later that evening, as Zayn is pushing cold stew around his plate, Niall comes in to the kitchen with his laptop open on his hip. Zayn stands, glad to see him out his room, but his relief fades when he realises Niall is wearing a stony expression he’s only really seen once before. 

“What is the name of your nanny,” Niall asks tonelessly.

“Justine,” says Zayn, going to get a plate for Niall. “Justine Begley.”

“Did she look like this,” says Niall, sliding his computer over. Zayn looks down at the screen. There’s a picture of a young woman with shoulder length brown hair and big hoop earrings tossing her head to the side, a drink in her hand. It looks like someone else has been cut out of the photo. 

“Yeah, that's her. But she had blonde hair when she worked for me.” He loads some stew onto the plate and pushes it towards Niall.

“If you’d said something when she first threatened you,” says Niall, in a tight way that sounds all wrong, twisting Zayn’s stomach into knots, “I would have been able to tell you that her real name is Adelaide Kent, and that Louis and Harry have both got restraining orders against her. And if I had told you that, when you filed a report, instead of just going into a database and sitting there forever, it would have had much more serious legal consequences, potentially leading to jail time. But you didn’t tell us. So I couldn’t tell you. And here we are.”

Zayn knows that the reason behind the intensity of Niall’s fury here is that, of the disasters that have befallen them this afternoon, his problem is easier to react to. Zayn’s crime – not being honest with his friends, proving Louis and the rest of the world at large right in saying that they have moved on in ways they always promised they wouldn’t – is much more immediate, far easier to take personally than Harry and Louis’ decade-old battle that may have unraveled their holiday’s whole project. But knowing this doesn’t stop Zayn’s blood from running cold, doesn’t make him feel any less traitorous. Hurting Niall is the last thing on the planet he has ever wanted to do. It makes _him_ feel like the criminal.

“I’m sorry, Niall,” he says simply. “I wish I had said something.”

“But you didn’t,” says Niall, walking off.

*** 

Everyone shuts themselves back in their rooms by seven.

***

Zayn’s phone rings.

“I found the camera!” says Perrie. “It was in a box at the back of your walk-in, buried under a pile of shoes!”

“I’ll be home tomorrow, I think,” says Zayn. He can’t absorb this news of hers. The victory doesn’t feel like it means anything at all, and if he’s honest, he was never that worried about the camera; he always felt like it was going to appear somewhere. The book stuff, on the other hand, has always been unstable.

“What? No, love, don’t cut your holiday short, didn’t you hear me? I said we’re fine now –”

“Not here,” Zayn says miserably.

“Tell me about it?”

Zayn does.

***

Harry comes loping in around midnight and settles next to him on the bed, nuzzling into his neck with his cold nose. Wordlessly Zayn pulls down the blankets to allow him to climb in properly. He smells clean and familiar and Zayn can feel the unhappiness coming off him in waves, so when he wraps himself around Zayn like a koala and the rest of his extremities are cold too Zayn doesn’t object to the full-grown man using him like a security blanket, just burrows back against him a little to acknowledge his presence before closing his eyes. He might not readily admit it, but he’s always been comfortable like this, anyway. It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep.

***

The next morning Louis is standing in the foyer with his suitcase. 

“You don’t want to just stay the last few days?” Liam asks him. “Hang by the pool? We can get FIFA.”

Zayn says nothing. He knows nothing on this planet has the power to keep Louis in the house right now when he has the option of leaving. It’s a luxury he didn't always have, and something he used to grumble about Harry for doing – because in truth Harry is the flighty one – but this is Harry’s space, Harry’s idea, and today it’s too uncomfortable for Louis. Zayn understands that.

“Sounds tempting, but no,” says Louis, his leg jiggling nervously up and down as he waits for the car. Security’s done their job; the women are gone, but people know where they are, and a few risk takers have been reportedly circling the area, waiting for them to emerge. That’s something they’re used to, though. Louis is going out in an SUV with a very good driver. “Where’s Niall? Can one of you please tell him I’m sorry?”

“Tell me yourself,” says Niall, who bobs sleepily up the stairs to hug Louis. “I’m sorry too, Lou.”

“I really thought we were going to get it done.”

“Me too,” says Niall. “But it’s okay. I’m glad things were aired at all.”

Zayn hugs Louis too, keeping him there for a few extra moments. It doesn’t feel like the end of anything, because it never will be, but it definitely doesn’t feel good. A car horn sounds from outside. 

“Call us when you get in,” he tells Louis.

“I will,” says Louis, and he’s gone.

***

The rest of them trickle out. Zayn just wants to go home now – he’s tired and he feels like he’s failed, somehow, like he was responsible for keeping a lid on everyone – but Harry’s determined to see the booking to the end, and Niall decides to stay too. Liam figures he may as well go home to Wolverhampton for his dad’s birthday and flies out with Zayn.

They don’t say much on the way back. Zayn is too busy thinking.

***

It is with an acute sense of déjà vu that Zayn wakes to a loud phone call a few mornings later.

“Have YOU HEARD THIS,” come the dulcet tones of Louis Tomlinson.

“Mate, it is quarter to seven on a Wednesday,” whispers Zayn, rolling quietly out of bed so as not to disturb Perrie.

“Yeah, but you answered,” says Louis.

Zayn grunts noncommittally. He may be leaving his phone on vibrate instead of straight up silent for the minute – just in case.

“Anyway, listen to this: ‘One night he wakes, strange look on his face. Pauses, and says, ‘You’re my best friend,’ and you knew what it was, he is in love’.”

“Are you writing poetry now,” says Zayn, padding over to fill the kettle. “Did the book stuff spark something in you.”

“You’re a real comedian before breakfast, aren’t you. Also, like, don’t know if you remember this, you might have to think back a while, but we write songs, not poetry. No Zayn, that’s a fucking Taylor Swift song off that fucking album. What the hell is that?”

Well, this is very interesting news indeed. Louis Tomlinson is using his time off to listen to Taylor Swift instead of burying himself in some new thing entirely. Something is ticking away in him.

“Um, seems a bit generic to me,” says Zayn. “Which track is that?”

“It’s called You’re In Love and I think it’s about me and I am _not_ pleased, in case you were –”

“No, wait, Lou,” Zayn stops him. He scrubs his face with a hand blearily. “I had Niall walk me through it after Harry told us. That one is about that girl – that girl from Girls and her boyfriend. Specifically. It’s one of the only ones where she named names.”

“It’s – okay, all right, but what about this: ‘Something happens when everybody finds out, see the vultures circling, dark clouds. Love’s a fragile little flame it could burn out.’”

“But no one did find out,” says Zayn, taking a clean mug out of the dishwasher. Perrie’ll have his head for not emptying the whole thing, but it’s too damn early.

“Or this, if you want to fucking get really into it: ‘Takes me home, lights are off, he’s taking off his coat. I say I heard that you’ve been out and about with some other girl. He says what you heard is true but I can’t stop thinking about you, and I said I’ve been there too a few times.’ Is that meant to be me? Is Taylor Swift being me and Harry? What the fucking fuck.”

“I’m still not convinced, to be honest. I think most of these songs could be about anyone but she knew the Harry thing would cause an uproar so she scattered a few vague hints here and there, it’s a good business move. Don’t you think the fact that you’re identifying with Taylor Swift songs might mean you’ve still got feelings for—”

“Identifying – with – identifying with _Taylor Swift_ –” Louis sputters out. Then there’s a series of beeps.

“Was that Louis?” asks Perrie, yawning as she comes down the stairs and pulling her dressing gown in tighter.

“I think he just hung up on me,” says Zayn, amused. “Tea?” 

***

Later that day Zayn gets a text:

 _It’s Taylor swift who identifies with ME!!!!!!!!!!_

***

Zayn has Niall meet him on Wood Street by the police headquarters. Things aren’t bad between them – there’s just been some unspoken tension. Zayn wants to fix it. So does Niall.

“I’m sorry I was such a brutal ass about the Justine thing,” says Niall as soon as he arrives. “You didn’t have to tell us anything. You couldn’t have known.”

“It would’ve made my life much easier, though,” says Zayn. “I wish I had. Anyway, I dragged you out here because there’s going to be a lot of paperwork, apparently, when I add my file to Justine’s case, and you know I’m rubbish with all this bureaucracy and you’re the best, so I was hoping you would help me?”

Niall laughs. “I’d be delighted to, Zayner,” he says, clapping an arm around him. “My treat. You can buy me a pint after.”

It takes them the better part of the morning going back and forth and filling out forms and scanning and retrieving the necessary documents to put together something submissible. Niall is infinitely useful in helping to pen Zayn’s written statement in the correct and proper language; he makes the whole ordeal feel like something of a game, and the cold hard pressing sensation that has been plaguing Zayn since the Justine issues started is finally dissolved, vanquished by Niall’s optimism and weirdly unshakeable belief in the power of the authorities.

The officer they deliver the case to tells them it’ll take a while to process, but that it’s a very interesting development in a long-running open file. Niall seems happy about this, which makes Zayn happy about it. He promises to keep them all updated.

In addition to a few pints Zayn also buys them a Porterhouse steak, which they take back to Niall’s place. Niall grills it expertly and they lie on the couch playing video games for the rest of the night.

“It’s a shame about the book,” murmurs Zayn. “You put in so much time and effort. I wish we had finished it.”

“Me too,” says Niall. “I really thought they could…”

“Yeah,” says Zayn. “Me too.”

***

Zayn’s making Farah’s bottles up the next day when he gets a text from Niall. It’s a paparazzi shot of Harry leaving a restaurant with some up-and-coming second-wave Lana Del Rey. Zayn is confused until another picture comes through: it’s a close up of Harry’s belt buckle, which has the word SORRY spelled out on it in big silver letters. Now that he looks back at the first shot it seems very obvious. God, Harry’s such a diehard romantic, but this is a weird move even for him.

Another text from Niall: _Send this t Louis_

 _U send it to Louis_ , Zayn responds.

_No he’ll think I’m in cahoots w H_

_And he won’t think I am?????_

But Zayn sends it anyway.

 _So what_ , says Louis. _Can I come and see the girls?_

***

Harry calls him a couple of hours later for a “catch up chat” that skirts ridiculously around anything that’s actually going on until he can no longer help himself and blurts out in what he probably thinks is a nonchalant tone whether any photos have made it across the pond lately.

“You mean your sorry belt,” says Zayn, ready to call a spade a spade.

“Great idea, don’t you think?” asks Harry excitedly.

“Yeah, but Haz, I just – isn’t it a dangerous game to play? Wasn’t half the issue that you always want to, um, make public things on Louis’ behalf?”

“I didn’t think about it like that.” Harry’s voice gets fainter. He’s in the middle of doing something else, Zayn can tell. “I thought about it like – you know how he thinks I’m so – like – people think for some reason that I can’t do any wrong, and that I go out of my way to keep that idea afloat, which isn’t true, and I wanted to – I want to show them that I can stuff up, I do all the time. I’m not making anything about him public, I’m putting my own faults on display, so he knows I think about it and I’m sorry.”

“I’m not sure it comes off that way,” says Zayn slowly. “It might be doing the opposite. Besides, Harry, it takes two to tango, you know that. He should be trying to fix things with you too.” _And maybe with us, both of you_ , he doesn’t say.

Harry scoffs. “He’s never going to do that first. _You_ know that. And I’m not going to give up. I want a proper chance. I know the house wasn’t like real life, and it may have been even… a little unhealthy, that environment. But I know we could do it. I know I.” There are a few loud rustling sounds and Zayn thinks Harry’s shoved the phone up close to his face. “I love him,” he says simply.

“Yeah, you do,” says Zayn. “I’m not telling you to drop it. I'm just saying… think about it. 

“I will,” says Harry, and that’s that.

***

The next day Niall sends Zayn another pap photo while Louis happens to be hanging out at his house. This time, Harry is leaning against the counter of a cold press juice bar, one of his terrible huge hats on his head. The hat has an equally huge label sticking out of it, sort of like the Mad Hatter’s price tag. The label says ‘SORRY’, and then in tiny writing that requires a lot of magnification, “To anyone and everyone: I just want you to know I’m not infallible. I have done some stupid things in my life based on wrongful assumptions and I don’t always realise it till it’s too late. Sometimes I reach out so blindly for the things I want that I forget to take into consideration the people around me. I am often selfish and self-centered when I think I’m at my most generous. For this I am truly sorry, and hope you can forgive me.” 

Fucking hell. Harry’s trying to explain a lifetime of behaviour to the entire world. It comes across as more than a little insane.

Wordlessly Zayn passes his phone to Louis.

“Is he apologising to the world for that piece of shit on his head,” says Louis cavalierly. “If so, not accepted.”

“Louis,” says Zayn. 

“Zayn,” says Louis.

“You could end this now if you said something to him. I know you’re thinking about saying something to him.”

“You don’t know me at all, Malik,” sniffs Louis. The way his fist clenches around Farah’s blanket tells a different story. “But I know that I – haven’t always handled this with maturity and grace, and you keep me around anyway. So. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, bro,” says Zayn. “Just…”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing, actually,” grunts Zayn. “This time I’ll leave it up to you two.” 

***

The next day: Harry outside a recording studio shaking hands with Ezra Koenig. Zayn almost misses this one, but Niall’s sent him a clarifying shot again with the details handily circled and magnified: two cufflinks, this time brass. One wrist: I WISH IT. The other: WAS DIFFERENT.

 _Did he get those custom made?????,_ says Louis, this time without Zayn forwarding him anything. _Does he know someone in the trade????? Does he have stock in metals. Am I meant to feel something about this ? I want u to no I don’t._  

_I fuking mean it!!!!!!_

***

By the fourth day all the celebrity gossip blogs and magazines are trying to figure out who is the target of Harry Styles’ “sorry campaign”. Niall assures Zayn Tumblr has had its theories from day one, and most of them involve Louis. Zayn tells Niall to make sure he never mentions this to Lou. OK! thinks it definitely has something to do with the Greece trip and has a spread featuring all the “sorry” outfits as well as a few photos from the beach. E! wonders if maybe Harry is apologising to fans for leading them astray, as “a recent rare One Direction public outing raised hopes that the band might be on the brink of releasing new music for the first time in three years, and the British heartthrob is no stranger to unorthodox methods of communication”.

Liam calls Zayn to discuss. Zayn has a work assignment that’s technically due “any time” but he’s neglected it entirely for weeks now and he feels so guilty about it, and as he explains the method to Harry’s madness he finds himself scribbling some ideas in the corner of a notebook. It’s miraculous what he can get done when he stops worrying about it. 

***

Harry stops his weird heart-on-sleeve stunt after the media goes big with it. Zayn would think about it more if he hadn’t found himself suddenly incredibly productive, churning out sketches and panels and tattoo ideas every day, like something’s come loose. He goes to a rehearsal of Perrie’s one day and is blown away by how amazing she is, which is not at all unusual, but he doesn’t think his vocals have ever been this tight and definitely his dancing has never come close to hers. Her new songs are sick and she’s this beautiful powerful wonder to watch, it’s insane.

“I love you _so_ much,” he tells her afterwards, and she laughs and lets him know that she would too if only he’d stop obsessing about his friends’ relationship like he’s Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap.

They look into getting a new nanny.

***

Niall sends out a group text that Zayn is actually awake and present to receive this time. It’s the first message in their chat since before Greece. “As u all know we’ve got some stuf to talk abt and I think I’ve given u enough time so please join me at Horan House tomorrow night for a little powwow, there will be beer.”

Everyone, even Louis, RSVPs.

***

Liam comes up to London in the morning and drops his things at Zayn’s.

“Is it a sleepover?” asks Kashira. “I love sleepovers.”

“It is!” says Liam, “But you’ll be in bed by the time we get home from Uncle Niall’s, my little nephew. 

“I’m not your nephew!” shrieks Kash, as Liam looks shocked.

“What? You aren’t? How did I not know!” he says, clapping his hand over his forehead with exaggerated mugging for her. It’s really criminal he doesn’t have any of his own yet.

They drive over to Niall’s later that evening. “I s’pose this is about the book,” says Liam in the car. “Poor Niall. We really stuffed it up royally.”

Zayn murmurs his agreement and they pull into a gate. He has a weird feeling about this. Is Harry going to be on Skype? How are they going to deal with that? Will Louis acknowledge his presence at all? Are they going to talk about it? As a group? Is this an intervention? Surely Niall would have told him if this was an intervention. And come to think of it, he hasn’t spoken to Louis in days.

But Louis’ late, as per usual, and Harry’s name is still grey on Niall’s Skype contact list. Zayn and Liam busy themselves with some snacks as Niall finishes bustling around lighting some candles.

“It’s only us, Nialler. Who are you setting the mood for?” Zayn watches him, perplexed.

“Meself,” mutters Niall, who has a box of matches and a beer clasped in one hand. He’s anxious about this. Zayn puts a hand on his shoulder, hums reassuringly.

They all sit down on the couch, seemingly unable to say anything without the other two present. Niall Whatsapps Harry, who responds “coming, sorry, got caught up!” Ten minutes goes by. Zayn wonders if Louis is sitting in his car somewhere having second thoughts about this.

Finally Skype makes its little bubble sound to indicate Harry’s come online. The computer starts ringing.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Niall, clicking accept.

A few seconds later Harry appears, looking a lot less worried than the rest of them, truth be told.

“Hiiiiiii!” he chirps. “How are we all?”

Just then another head pops into the frame, cheeks a bit flushed and eyes overbright.

“Hello lads,” says Louis Tomlinson.

Niall spits out some of his beer.

“Er,” says Liam. Zayn’s sentiments exactly.

“Wh… a…” says Niall.

“We here to talk memoir, then?” asks Harry cheerfully.

“We’ve been thinking about it, and we’d like to see it through, if that’s okay with you,” says Louis. “Just might have to be from different continents. Also we’re very sorry for being giant pricks forever and we want to make it up to you.”

Zayn thinks Niall may be about to pass out.

“What is happening,” Zayn manages to say. “What is happening. Tell us.”

“Oh, you mean this?” asks Louis, pointing to Harry.

“YES, HE MEANS THAT!” roars Niall, who is subsequently shocked by his own volume.

“Well, I just thought,” drawls Louis, “I just thought –”

“He came here to talk,” says Harry, now beaming from ear to ear either at the thought of Louis’ arrival or because for the first time in history he’s come up with an answer before someone else got there. Or both.

“You two talked without us?” says Liam, bewildered.

“We do have that function, yes,” says Louis.

“Are you—”

“Don’t know yet,” says Harry happily. “ _Stop doing that_ ,” hisses Louis. “ _What?_ ” says Harry. “ _I’m just excited_.” Louis elbows him in the chest.

Zayn really wants to lie down on the couch. This was too easy. Surely this was too easy. He says so out loud.

“You don’t always hear everything that goes on between us,” Harry points out.

“Uh, we hear most things,” says Niall. “This seems like an important thing not to have heard.”

“You heard both of us separately. You just didn’t hear the end bit.”

“Would there be very great consequences if we murdered you,” says Zayn.

“Yes,” says Harry. “You love us both a lot. You would be very sad.”

“I tried to put down what I wanted to say in writing but it didn’t work. So I thought that I would just go say them instead,” says Louis. “And then we talked, and we’re still in the middle of talking, but it’s going well. We’re –” he ducks his head at Harry, “—progressing.”

“But who’s mediating?” asks Niall.

“You know, I think we might do better without an audience,” says Louis thoughtfully.

Zayn, Niall, and Liam are flabbergasted.

“We’re not blaming you,” says Harry quickly.

“You better fucking not be, Haz,” growls Niall.

“We’ve just never really had time to ourselves where we weren’t under one kind of pressure or another. So this has been very good for us.”

“I really don’t know what to say,” says Liam.

“I would like everyone to know that this had nothing to do with fucking belt buckles,” says Louis, and Harry’s smile turns instantly into offense.

“What was it then? Taylor Swift?” asks Zayn.

“No,” says Louis. “But a lot of thinking. About what I want. So. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” says Zayn. Niall has gone to get more beer. “We’re very happy for the both of you.”

Harry laughs and nudges Louis’ arm. Louis nudges him back. Both of them are wriggling about like there’s something else going on as well. Zayn hopes it’s just footsie.

“Right. Well, um, this has been. We’ll…” trails Niall, who has sort of lost the plot.

“We’ll leave you to it,” finishes Liam. “You look like you have more, er, catching up to do, and we can continue this any time. Have fun, you two.”

“Mmm, we will,” says Harry, a mad dark glint in his eye. Louis blows them a kiss. “Byyyye,” says Harry again, and ends the call.

“Huh,” says Zayn.

“Did you see the way they were looking at each other?” demands Niall. “What in the goddamn motherfucking cunting piece of arse world –”

“Steady!” says Liam, snaking his arm around the back of the couch to hang from Niall’s shoulder.

“I think this is good,” says Zayn slowly. “Right? I think this is going to be good.”

“What makes this time any different?” asks Niall.

“It’s never happened like this before,” says Liam. “And they’re much older.”

“It’s not just that,” says Zayn, sipping his ale thoughtfully. “Louis has budged. Harry has budged. I think they’re both, like, self-aware. Maybe in ways they never were before.”

“We need to just trust ‘em, Niall. You’ve always had the most faith about all of us. Just listen to your gut and take it easy.”

“Let’s go out,” says Zayn. “C’mon, Nialler. Your book is back on the table! We need to celebrate!”

“Trust them,” repeats Niall.

***

It’s summer and although he would never admit it as a born and bred Bradford boy, Zayn actually thinks Liam’s farm smells great. The girls _definitely_ think Liam’s farm smells great, if Farah’s shrieks of joy every time Perrie holds her up to touch Phillipe, Liam’s patient bay Clydesdale, are anything to go by. “Just like her mum and dad,” says Perrie fondly to Kaya. Kash has contented herself with chasing after ducklings day and night – that is, when she can’t find Uncle Niall to play personal concerts for her. And Harry and Louis keep disappearing for odd spells and coming back with straw in their hair, so Zayn would venture to say they’re making good use of the property, too. There is a very nice babbling brook they’ve been sitting out by and chatting as the sun goes down most nights.

It’s a bit of an odd place to have a book launch, but then again, they’ve had enough fancy event galas to last them a lifetime. Besides, Zayn had argued, when you’re self-publishing fewer than fifty copies, is a big do really even necessary? _Always_ , Harry had exclaimed over FaceTime. Has anyone seen those Steve Coogan movies, why don’t we go on a trip to Italy –

Why don’t you just come to my place for the weekend, Liam suggested firmly, just Louis was about to push Harry into the Venice beach canals. Niall was enthusiastic at this idea – he was enthusiastic about everything ever since they’d finally agreed they had reached a final draft of the manuscript – and everyone flew in with the families and settled in the farmhouse with minimal fuss.

On Saturday night they had a big bonfire and an official ceremony to hand over books to the next of kin, who at this stage were really just comprised of Kash and Farah, very beautifully dressed for the occasion, although Liam had given his books to his sisters and Harry vowed to the night sky that he would return this time next year with a baby.

“Who knows,” Louis had said. “If this audience is receptive maybe we can think about putting them on a few more shelves.”

“I’ll toast to that,” said Zayn.

“I’ll toast to us,” said Niall. “We did it, boys.”

“I always knew we had it in us,” said Harry.

“Excellent work, lads,” said Liam.

They were huddled together by the fire and for a second Zayn had a flash of displacement and adrenaline, like they were about to go on stage somewhere huge. But then he was pulled back into the moment again, the actuality of twelve years together filling the space between them, a comforting fact that could never be taken away. They would be together in whatever capacity for the rest of their lives. No matter what. It just was. They just were.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [COME YELL WITH ME ON TUMBLR](http://space-bakery.tumblr.com) ! If you like.


End file.
